Great and Good
by SpellCleaver
Summary: Valentine's plans are put in jeopardy when his daughter, trained to be the most powerful angel warrior there is, and the only one her demonic brother loves, runs away. Clary seeks safety with her mother in New York, where she recognises the Angel boy her father sent away so long ago. A war is coming, but with family on both sides, where does she stand? Some swearing OOC/AU
1. To Fly Away

**To Fly Away**

 _Chapter song: Wings by Birdy_

Idris, 2001

 _Jonathan stood with his father at one of the windows in the little cottage they lived in, watching a nine year old Clary doing her best to climb a tree just outside. He smiled to himself when she finally dragged herself up onto a large, low hanging branch, but the faint smile was quickly wiped away when she lost her grip and went crashing onto the grass. With his enhanced hearing he heard her gasp of pain quite clearly,and made a move to run to her, when he was stopped by his father's hand on his back._

 _"Leave her be, Jonathan," Valentine ordered. Jonathan fought back a wince as the hand on his back aggravated the demon metal scars there. "Seraphina is strong enough to take care of herself."_

 _He could have torn himself from his father's grip, but the words rang true. He surveyed the man through narrowed eyes. "Is that why you beat me and not her? Because she's already strong?" Valentine's excuse for the whippings was that they made his son stronger._

 _"No," came the calculated answer. "You are far stronger than her."_

 _"Then why?" He didn't want to bring down the whip on his little sister, but he was curious. Besides, if he knew why Valentine would hurt her, he might be able to protect her better._

 _Valentine sighed, and made the motion for Jonathan to walk with him. He did. "You are a demon Jonathan," he said bluntly. The boy in question grit his teeth and brought Clary's insistent words to the front of his mind._ You are not a monster _. He wished he could believe them. "Both you and your sister could leave at any time if you really wanted to, but I know that with you, no matter how hard I push, you will not abandon your place here."_

 _"What makes you so sure?" He bit back in defiance. Valentine casually swatted away his attempt aside like it was barely a mild encumbrance._

 _"Because this is the only place you will ever find where you are accepted for who you are." His father answered blatantly. "Anywhere else, and they would try to kill you without a second thought."_

 _Jonathan swallowed against the truth of that statement._

 _"But Seraphina," his father continued. "Could do anything. Be anyone. She is an angel, the angel who keeps you grounded, therefore is too good for this world, therefore she will have a place anywhere she wants. She chooses to reside in this hated community out of love. If I were to beat her, that love would curdle to hate, and she would fly away on those white feathered wings of hers. She would be gone before the next morning light."_

 _Jonathan - who was never scared of anything - was almost scared to ask whether he loved Clary the way he knew his father loved the Angel boy, if he was even capable of love. After all, both had Ithuriel's blood, and were as sweet and loving as each other (or so his sister claimed about their brother; Jonathan loathed him and never wanted to lay eyes upon the kid). He momentarily wondered whether his father would love him if he weren't a demon. But Valentine had wanted a demon son, hadn't he?_

 _The man continued, oblivious to the child next to him's conflict. "And that would ruin everything."_

* * *

London, 2004

The rough ground of the multiple story car park glistened in the harsh streetlight, a remnant of the rain from earlier that night. Even at three in the morning, when not a hint of sunlight caressed the sky, a few cars were occupying various spaces on this floor. Only one person, however, was in sight.

This person didn't need a remnant of the torrential rain; she remembered it well enough. Her crimson hair still hung in damp clumps and tangles, and her black leather clothes that had drawn distrust from ever pedestrian she'd passed were soaked, making her shiver and her teeth rattle like beads in a jar. Her eyelashes clung together, and an observer might think that the droplet that rolled down her smooth cheek was a raindrop. Her pale arms were bare, her skin unmarried by age but scarred with dozens of white scars and swirling black Marks. Other than the scars which seemed like they would be more at home on a much older person, she seemed to be barely a teenager, maybe twelve or thirteen, with sides as straight as twigs and flat breasts.

She looked around with a bleak hopelessness on her face, then trudged towards where an illuminated sign proclaimed the exit.

She paused when someone cleared their throat behind her. As the teenager turned, hair swinging behind her, she could make out a tall, oriental man with glitter in his spiked hair studying her intently. Magnus Bane, the not-quite-a-man she'd been looking for.

He narrowed his gold-green cat eyes. "I know you're not one of the London Enclave, Shadowhunter," he said finally. "So as to why you're here eludes me."

He was lying, that much she knew. She didn't even need to discern the all-too-evident telltale signs like her father had taught her; she just knew.

She straightened her back, and tilted her head back to look the tall warlock in the eye. She saw him gasp and take a step back as he finally processed the resemblance. "I am here because I fled my home, Magnus Bane." She stated. "And I sought out you."

Magnus tightened his lips. He took a step forwards. "And why might you do that, Shadowhunter?" He countered, but she saw him register her lack of insulting nickname, and take note of it. "Do you not have more important business to be getting on with? Such as slaughtering the demons that haunt us all?"

The redhead swallowed. "There are many of my kind doing that as we speak. I can afford to pursue a different type of emergency in the meantime."

It was Magnus' turn to swallow. "And what might this emergency require you to do?" He was playing with her, trying to test her loyalties.

She gave a tremulous smile. "I'm looking," she made sure to enunciate clearly, although she was certain he caught the faintest tremble in her voice, "for Jocelyn Fairchild."

* * *

Jocelyn Fairchild - or, as she now called herself, Fray - had done many controversial things in her lifetime, even more so when she had still called herself Jocelyn Morgenstern, Valentine's wife. She had engineered the Uprising and mercilessly watched dozens of her old friends slaughtered in their righteous conquest. She had allowed Valentine to keep giving her the strange elixirs spiked with ichor when she was pregnant for a second time, despite the horrible way her son had turned out because of them. She had lay down and accepted the lie her husband had fed her regarding the state of his _parabatai_ , and had allowed herself to fall into depression due to it.

But the only one of the necessary things she had ever done that she genuinely regretted was leaving her sweet angelic daughter at the mercy of her brother and father.

So when Magnus Bane sent her a fire message telling her to head to his temporary residence, and saying that a girl with red hair, calling herself Clarissa Fairchild had turned up in the car park for his building, she got over there as fast as she could.

On the way there she took in the blocks of concrete flats that surrounded Magnus' place. It was very... subdued, for him. She loved London, it was bursting with history, but she was looking forward to the imminent move to New York she had arranged. After twelve and a half years she'd heard from her old friend Luke, saying he was living comfortably there as the Alpha Wolf in the Manhattan pack, and that he missed her.

She reached Magnus' block of flats and took the stairs two at a time, too impatient to wait for the lift to arrive. By the time she lifted a hand to knock on Magnus' mahogany door, her heart was hammering in her throat, from either physical exertion or nerves.

Two decisive knocks rang out.

The door swung open almost immediately to reveal the attention-catching Asian man she owed her disappearance to. He was looking much more plain today; no eyeliner, no glitter, and his usually spiked hair looked tousled, like he'd fun his hand through it multiple times.

His tired eyes lit up slightly when they landed on her. "Jocelyn, you're here." He ushered her in. "Clary's just in the shower. The nutter showed up at three am last night, soaked from the downpour. She looked near dead from cold."

Jocelyn raised an eyebrow. "Clary?"

Magnus shrugged. "She says 'Clarissa' is too formal. She calls herself Clary, like the herb, clary sage."

Jocelyn nodded, greedily absorbing every little piece of information about her long lost daughter. It warmed her heart to think she still remembered her nickname for her after all these years.

"She should-" he was cut off by the bathroom door opening. Jocelyn's heart sped up again as she laid eyes on the twelve year old who stepped out.

Clary had clearly borrowed clothes from Magnus: she wore a pair of faded, artfully ripped jeans that were a few sizes too big for her, and a tank top that looked ever so slightly tight around the chest that proclaimed in glinting rhinestones _THINK GLITTER_! Her scarlet hair curled violently as it dried, forming a cascade of copper ringlets going halfway down her back. Her bright eyes are alert and wary, with a touch of longing, as they surveyed Jocelyn. She held out her palms in the universal gesture to show she carried no weapons.

Jocelyn held her hand to her mouth. "Clary?" She whispered. She felt tears brimming in her eyes.

Something sparked in her daughter's eyes then: a cheeky wickedness she'd missed so much. She stuck her hand in her pockets. "Hey, Mum," she said with a lopsided grin.

Jocelyn rushed forwards to hug her smaller double, barely containing the sob that shook her chest. Clarissa was all skin and bones and muscle; not a square millimetre of fat burdened her fragile frame, giving her body an unyielding hardness. It made Joceyn want to tremble with pride for her daughter, the dedicated Shadowhunter, but at the same time weep, because she was no longer the soft baby she'd sung lullabies to. She'd sacrificed her right to watch the transformation from soft to hard, and it broke her heart.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, still clutching the child in a death hug, but pulling back so she could see her face.

"I ran away," the redhead replied neutrally.

"Why?" A darkness flashed in Clary's eyes, a darkness Jocelyn knew all too well. She found she suddenly didn't want to know. "It doesn't matter; you're here. You're here." She murmured instead, brushing back a wet curl that had been plastered to her daughter's freckled cheek.

"I came to ask..." She trailed off, but Jocelyn understood what she was going to say.

" _Of course_ you can stay with me. I wanted to take you with me when I left." Now she had her daughter back, she was never letting go.

And with unused facial muscles, Clary smiled.


	2. To Build A Home

**To Build A Home**

 _Chapter song: 2007 by Beth Crowley_

Idris, 1993

 _Jocelyn watched her two year old daughter and her daughter's brother play in the gardens of the cottage, heart sinking with the heavy dread of having her suspicions confirmed._

 _They would have been confirmed earlier, but she'd refused to see what was right in front of her. Even at age three, Jonathan was cold and detached, snide to everyone except his sister, who he showed the only love he seemed capable of, and his father, who seemed to be the only person he was afraid of. He hated his mother, his mother hated him, and each knew of the other's hatred. Even now, as they gazes clashed over Clary's shoulder, his once-peaceful face curled into a sneer directed at her. I was unsettling how a toddler whose humanity was so dead could make such an expression._

 _Jocelyn half-expected the boy to kill her on the spot._

 _She forced herself not to recoil from his hateful gaze, instead meeting his coldness with her own blankness. She analysed his dark irises. She'd read about those eyes in Valentine's sickeningly detailed journals; about how when Jonathan would stab a woodland animal in the neck and watch the life drain out of it, they would become so dark one couldn't tell pupil from iris, but how when he looked at his sister and smiled one of his rare smiles they would flash a deep, rich emerald colour - not quite the shade of his mother's and sister's, but close enough to be notable._

 _She cast a side glance at her husband, who was observing his children closely and scribbling notes in that infernal notebook of his. After his attempt of rebellion at the Uprising was botched (to put it lightly), he'd grabbed her hand - the other arm roughly cradling Jonathan - and ran. It had turned out that one thing did remain of the ruins of what was once Morgenstern Manor: the servant's cottage. They'd set up a life there, raising their children and keeping hidden. Valentine mentioned having faked their deaths to make their disappearance explainable, like she hadn't already snuck off to get a look at the remains of the Fairchild manor, and cry at the remains of her parents. Valentine had never stopped to think that Jocelyn may have played a fundamental part in his defeat at the Accords._

 _With a jolt she exited her train of thought to see Clary's pudgy face filling her vision, with freckles lavishly dotting her nose and cheekbones like chocolate sprinkles on an ice cream. With a laugh her daughter reached out a plump fist to grab a handful of crimson hair and compare it to her own ginger locks, seemingly fascinated by the vibrant colours. Jocelyn and Jonathan - who hovered behind his sister - smiled broadly in unison, before immediately scowling at one another._

 _Meeting her son's narrow gaze, Jocelyn understood one thing: the only reason she wasn't dead yet, was because Jonathan knew it would break his sister's heart to see her idolised mother go._

* * *

New York, 2007

Clary woke to the sound of rain pelting the windows of her room.

 _Ugh._ It was August, for goodness sake! It shouldn't be this cold, or wet.

 _Idris does it's seasons properly,_ she reminisced. _In summer: sunshine. Autumn: equal blend of rain and sun. Winter: snow. Spring: light rain. I wish-_

She cut off that dangerous train of thought. She wished what? That she'd never left?

No freaking way. She wouldn't have been able to stand living there a _second_ longer. Not after-

She yanked herself out of bed, not at all surprised to see by the blinking digital clock that it was half past three in the morning. Even after three years her body clock demanded that she get up with the dawn, her father's threat of making her training even more gruelling than it already was hammered into her subconscious.

Shivering at the mere thought, remembering the time Jonathan had let her sleep in when their father was out of a trip, only for him to come home early and catch her sleeping. She shuddered harder at the memory of that day, partly out of sympathy because she'd later realised he'd been whipped for that offence.

She stomped down the feeling, experiencing a satisfying squelch as it was squished beneath her attacks. Her brother was a demon. _A demon._ He neither needed nor deserved her sympathy.

She roughly threw on some clothes. Even after three years without having to worry about being scolded for untidiness, she hadn't broken her habit of ensuring she looked impeccable. Of course, almost immediately after the check, she rumpled her clothes almost unconsciously until they were in their previously messy state: a habit she'd picked up from her years with Jocelyn.

It was disorientating, being stuck between two worlds - a hand clamped to the cliff of one, a hand desperately straining to grip to the cliff of the other. And between the cliffs, beneath her dangling feet, yawned an abyss she did _not_ want to hit the bottom of.

So she shrugged off any semblance of recollection and grabbed a stick of charcoal and a nub of chalk, pulling her sketchbook towards her. She'd always liked drawing, even before she'd come to New York, and now under her mother's tutelage she'd become incredibly good at it - though nowhere near as good as Jocelyn herself.

Under her careful ministrations an image began to form under her fingers: a series of black and white smudges that collaborated together to form a monochrome image of Simon, her best friend. In the picture he seemed to be made of stone, and was oddly solemn. She bit her lip, knowing perfectly well what particular incident had incited that interpretation. She'd have to check on him later.

She flicked the book shut and sat up from where she'd been lying on her stomach to walk to the bathroom and rinse the grey powder from her fingertips. With another check of the clock she registered that an hour had passed, and yet it was nowhere near what any mundane would consider a reasonable waking up time.

She huffed a resigned sigh, before going back to her room and surveying the place for something to do. Her photo board above her bed was neatly pinned with pictures of her and Simon, her and Jocelyn, Luke, and even the occasional one with Magnus in it. The drawing pins was organised in rainbow order, which to any observer would probably give the impression that the rest of the display was displayed as meticulously. But no: in an act of rebellion against what she'd been taught the photos weren't pinned in any particular order and were even tilted in haphazard dimensions within the frame. Overall, the untidiness of it all made it look almost artistic. It was like something her mother would have made.

So she embraced it whole heartedly.

The rest of the room, was less ordinary. On the surface, perhaps, but beneath the skin all that normal evaporated into the ether.

Her closet looked fairly unremarkable, but it was full of painstakingly folded (by her) black leather garments: trousers, arm braces, boots. Her drawers were scattered with an uncanny hodgepodge of art supplies and glinting runed weapons. Hunks of twisted metal that she knew were inactivated seraph blades were tossed in a draw unceremoniously with her vibrant acrylic paints. Her easel, with the half finished watercolour-and-ink painting of the skyline of Manhattan adorning the sheet of stiff paper stacked on it, was also used as a substitute for a hat stand, with a tough leather jacket hanging from the corner. Her many steles were housed in a section of the tray holding her pencils, and on the bookshelf that ran at head height along the wall a thickly bound copy of the Shadowhunter's Codex was nestled snugly amongst classic volumes such as _Five Children And It_.

Sometimes she got a headache just looking at it, and trying to take in the collision of two worlds that should have enough space for universes to reside in between them.

She frowned, before reaching forwards to dislodge her jacket so she could study the painting. Running a finger over the dry paint to make sure it wouldn't run, she flipped to the next page. It showed Brooklyn Bridge, with the river below it gleaming a metallic blue. The buildings in the background were shadowed, but still detailed, and the bridge was drawn in a shiny graphite pencil, making it stand out against the blues and greens and greys. Above the city a girl stood watch like a guardian angel; her scarlet hair a stark contrast to the other hues as it flickered over her shoulders, her pale hands planted confidently on her hips, her slim limbs adorned with sharp black swirling Marks. The top half of her face was cut off but her mouth was set in a determined line.

Sometimes she worried what was going on in her head in order for her to produce pieces of art like that.

She checked the clock again. _4_ _:35_ winked at her in tauntingly cheery, blue lights. She groaned.

She'd woken up this early for years and found herself with nothing to do. This was the most boring time of the day, when there was no one to talk to, no one to keep her distracted so she didn't think about what she'd long ago sworn not to think about.

When the agonisingly slow watch finally declared it six o'clock, she grabbed her jacket off of the floor where she'd kicked it and slipped it on, relishing the firm embrace it held her in. She threw on her boots and exited the apartment - taking care not to let the door slam - humming a disjointed tune to herself.

She jogged around the still silent streets, absorbed in the pounding of her heart and the pounding of her footsteps echoing against the brick houses. She passed an alleyway and was sure she detected the faintest flicker of a pale shadow. Then another. Then another. _Vampires._

She didn't stop. They weren't breaking the Accords. So long as they left her alone, she'd leave them alone. All the Downworlders in New York knew to keep any knowledge about the mysterious teenage Shadowhunter bearing more Marks than the average adult and sharing an apartment building in Brooklyn with a half-crazed witch to themselves.

She stopped after forty five minutes, the autumn sun still over an hour away from beginning the show it's mane. Pressing a thumb to her right wrist and registering her surprisingly steady pulse, she vaguely realised she'd jogged right to the pavement in front of Simon's house. She eyed a stone on the ground, then passed her gaze to the shining window overlooking the street that she knew belonged to Simon, debating the merits of throwing it and waking him up.

 _Screw it,_ she thought as she scooped the pebble with her right hand - her dominant one. _He's meant to be nocturnal now anyway._


	3. To Help A Friend

**To Help A Friend**

 _Chapter song: Valerie by Amy Winehouse_

Idris, 1998

 _"Jonathan!" Clary cried, running into his room toting a large book she'd found in the library. "Jonathan, look!"_

 _Her brother, only eight but mature for his age, glanced up from where he'd been perusing his own reading material. He smiled at her as she hurriedly plopped herself into the window seat next to him, oblivious to his shiver. "What is it, Clare?"_

 _She eagerly thumbed the pages until she reached the one page that had got her so excited. She looked on with bewilderment as his face fell, his brief cheer sinking to the depths of Hell._

 _"Where did you find this?!" He asked, and though he didn't shout or obtrusively raise his voice, she found herself shrinking back the way she did whenever their father spoke disapprovingly to her._

 _"It was in my assigned reading material," she muttered in response, her pale emeralds downcast. "I got excited." She turned her face up to his suddenly, like a fiery flower turning towards the sun. Her violent mood swings would never cease to unnerve him. "What's it like, Jonathan?" She prodded excitedly. He was caught off guard, and tried to control how he reacted._

 _"It's not something you can explain. I don't know, myself. And often one person ends up backstabbing the other." He chose his words carefully. He wasn't lying, per se, after all, Lucian had betrayed Valentine. But it was misleading._

 _Why was it so easy for him to lie to everyone else, but physically painful for him to so much as mislead his sister?_

 _Crestfallen, Clary dragged herself up from the window seat and left the room. He glanced once back down at the open book she'd left behind._

 _Glaring back up at him, stark black against the creamy pages, under a heading, was the_ parabatai _rune._

* * *

New York, 2007

She waited for a while, and was about to throw another stone, when Simon's pale face appeared at the window. He scowled good-naturedly down at her. "You woke me up!" He huffed with irritation.

Clary curled her hands around her mouth, to direct her shout, and replied "I call bullshit. You're nocturnal now."

"Don't remind me," he grumbled. "I'll be down in a second." He meant it literally. He climbed out of the window and jumped, his newly acquired vampire instincts saving him from a shattered fibula. She grinned up at him when he began to walk next to her down the street.

He studied her thoughtfully, and, despite her father's constant hate training, she saw the flicker of concern - humanity - behind his dead white skin. "You're not nocturnal, though," he continued blithely. Real tenderness was behind the timid pat on her shoulder. "And I'm prepared to bet that if you only came to me now, you've been up a few hours. Sleep is good for you, Clarissa."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm aware." Another of her sporadic guilt flashes hit her again. "I'm still really sorry about the whole 'turning you into a vampire' thing."

This time, it was his turn to roll his eyes. He stopped walking altogether, dragging Clary to a halt with him. At her quizzical look, he took both her hands.

"You're not going to kiss me, are you?" She asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly. They both knew what had happened the last time he tried that. "You look like you're going to kiss me."

"No I'm not going to kiss you." He rushed out, vaguely exasperated. "Clarissa Fray - or whatever your name is," he began slowly. "Let me repeat what I've been parroting for the past two weeks. What I've been repeating since I was reborn. _It. Was. Not. Your. Fault._ "

"But-" She pulled her right hand out of his grip; he used his now free left to make the universal gesture for silence.

"Listen to me." After a moment, she nodded. He recaptured her free hand. "It. Was. Not. Your. Fault. I was the dumbass who followed you when you told me not to. I was the dumbass who didn't trust that you knew what you were doing." He lifted his right hand to brush back a rebellious strand of hair. "You, on the other hand, were the smart one who bargained for my _life_. Well, unlife, but you get the point. You were the one who buried me - _in a Jewish cemetery_ , no less. You were the one who fed me when I was reborn. Stop blaming yourself for something that was my. Fault."

She swallowed. "Okay." She looked down. "Now can you please release my hands."

He looked at her suspiciously, like he wasn't sure she believed his little speech, but did as requested and stepped back. Despite the fact that she _knew_ , logically, that he no longer gave off any body heat, she felt cold once he was gone, as though he carried some ghostly semblance of warmth with him wherever he went.

"So..." Simon said cheerfully, all previous solemnity gone. "What do you want to do?"

She shrugged, and altered their course towards the brick wall of a warehouse. They ducked into an alleyway where they likely wouldn't be seen, even by vampires, and even if they were seen, the vampires would keep their mouths shut. Clary had contributed greatly to Downworlder safety during her - albeit brief - time in New York. She pulled out her stele. "Taki's?"

Simon smiled then. The familiar expression on such as familiar face sent a pang through her gut. _So much has changed_. "You even have to ask?"

* * *

Taki's was a restaurant famous amongst New York's Downworlders for the outstanding food quality, and the fact that it was a place - much like the club Pandemonium nearby - where mundanes with the sight and Shadowhunters and Downworlders and all other oddities of the Shadow world (never demons; they were dumb, but not dumb enough to go to a hotbed of Shadowhunter activity) mingled without _too much_ hostility, and sometimes even friendliness. If such as thing existed, even with the Accords. People still remembered the Uprising.

Clary had found this place around a week after she'd moved with her mother to see Luke in New York. The werewolf pack leader had been surprised to see her - and more than a little wary, considering who had raised her - but he'd come around to Jocelyn's perspective and realised that Clary wanted what she genuinely said she wanted. He'd introduced her to his pack - naturally skipping the minor detail that her father was a zealot who wanted to wipe their kind from the face of the Earth - and she'd swiftly become fast friends with Maia, a werewolf girl of mixed race the same age as Clary, and her boyfriend Bat.

Maia had brought Clary to Taki's one day after a hunt, insisting it was the best place in the whole of New York _and_ it catered to a Shadow World community. Clary had enjoyed herself the night they came here, despite the fact she was on guard from the moment Maia had told her, amber-green eyes sparking with contempt, that a trio of particularly haughty Shadowhunters from the New York Institute frequented the place. Maia had noticed Clary's discomfort at the time and had kept the secrets the redhead confided to her about her past, and regrettable family members.

She swiftly surveyed the restaurant, absolutely jumping with customers despite the early hour, and perked up noticeably when she spotted Maia sitting alone in one of the booths, brooding as she stirred her drink with the straw. She beckoned imperiously to Simon (some habits refused to be broken) and they both slid in opposite her. "What's up?" Clary inquired cheerfully, but with a noticeably thread of concern lacing her voice.

Maia glanced up, then down again; her clear eyes were dull. She tried for a weak smile, and it looked like a heroic effort before it dropped. "I broke up with Bat." She confessed, biting her lip and stirring her drink some more. The glass was full. Her friend hadn't so much as taken a sip.

"Oh?" Clary raised her eyebrows. She couldn't say she hadn't been expecting this for quite some time. "Why?"

Maia tightened her grip on the glass; the tendons in her bony hands stood out stark and shadowed against her coffee coloured skin. "Because I can't stop worrying he's like Jordan."

There was silence in the booth then, save for Simon's muttered "Oh". No one knew what to say, and it seemed that everything had already been said. Finally Clary opened her mouth and spoke past the suffocating silence. "Don't beat yourself up about this, Maia. It's better to end it now than hurt the both of you later."

Maia looked up briefly, letting her eyes focus on her friends sitting opposite her. "I know," she murmured. Then her gaze slid past the two to land on whoever was just coming through the door. Her eyes widened. "Shit," she breathed.

Curious, Clary shifted round to look at who was entering - and hastily drew her head back. "Shit," she reciprocated, and locked panicked gazes with Simon. They wordlessly swapped places, so Clary was the one sitting in the corner, cloaked by shadows. She yanked her stele out of her boot and frantically scrawled a messy-looking rune on the square inch of exposed skin on her calf. Instantly every rune on her freckled skin faded from even the sight of those resistant to glamours - all save the rune causing it to happen. Now she could pass for a mundane with the sight, or a warlock with a hidden mark, or - at a stretch - a faerie. She took a deep breath, then met Maia's uneasy expression with a smile that looked easier than it felt.

Because the teenager who just stepped through the door with his adoptive siblings was Jace Wayland, the "golden boy" her father had raised in the other house, her other angel counterpart, and her self-proclaimed best friend until he'd been sent away at age ten.

And he was walking, judging by the deer in the headlights expression on Maia's face, right towards them.


	4. To Hide From The Past

**To Hide From The Past**

 _Chapter song: Don't You Remember by Adele_

Idris, 1998

 _"Jonathan," Jonathan's father called from downstairs. The golden haired boy's attention was instantly transferred from his book to the sound. "Come down here."_

 _He scrambled to do so, dropping his book with a thud on the carpeted floor in his haste. His father had been absent on one of his many trips to Angel knows where. It'd been at least two weeks since Jonathan last saw him, and he had missed him. Plus, his father might be able to help him tame the falcon he'd found; he was certainly struggling to do so himself._

 _"Jonathan?" He heard as he thundered down the stairs. He was taking too long. He put on an extra burst of speed and almost toppled down the stone steps, catching himself just in time to land neatly on his feet in front of his father._

 _Michael Wayland was a tall man, with broad shoulders that always seemed to cast an even broader shadow and despite his relative youth, his hair was the steely colour of the knives he made his son use. He was always solemn, with a stern expression on his face that betrayed nothing of what he was feeling, and was always heavily laden with weapons, like he needed a walking armoury, or was constantly expecting an attack._

 _Who knew; maybe he was._

 _But for once, his expression almost seemed... Not jovial, but soft. Less harsh, less grave. And he wasn't alone, someone was with him, which had_ never _happened before._

 _In light of this oddity, Jonathan saw fit to examine the companion he father had brought with him. It was girl, to add to the list of surprises, and she seemed to be studying him just as intently. Her ginger hair was the colour of the fires Jonathan had had to start himself every night since his father's departure at the turn of the seasons, and she had narrowed green eyes the shade of the grass visible just outside the window. She was short, and looked to be maybe a year younger than him, having some sparse remnants of baby fat coating her cheekbones. Nevertheless, she stood braced for an attack - the same way Jonathan himself did. He felt respect for her swell in his chest as she fingered a dagger at her waist that she clearly knew how to use._

 _"Ah, I see you've noticed your guest," his father cut in, interrupting the stare down between the two children. He gestured to the girl, his hands so big in comparison to her deceptively dainty frame that he looked like he might knock her head off in one fell swoop. "This is Seraphina."_

 _Jonathan, being the observant boy he'd been trained to be, registered Seraphina's minute flinch but made no comment, finding himself not wanting to betray her discomfort to his grave father, who continued ceaselessly._

 _"She's the daughter of a good friend of your father's-" Jonathan wondered briefly why he was referring to himself in the third person, "-and she'll be visiting us occasionally, so you can train together."_

 _The child nodded to Seraphina and she nodded back, looking distinctly unhappy to be in this situation, for whatever reason that may be. Michael clapped his hands in what would have looked like a gesture of pleasure from a more cheerful man, and waved them into the library._

 _"Go and acquaint yourselves with each other," he ordered. Jonathan raised an eyebrow at his new 'friend', who scowled for mysterious reasons._

 _"Ladies first," he offered, slightly teasingly, since he saw the spark of anger leap in her green pools, like the comment had been flint scraping against stone. She surreptitiously elbowed him as she passed._

 _Hard._

* * *

 _"Do I have to call you Jonathan?" She burst out the moment they were out of hearing range of his father._

 _Jonathan raised an eyebrow again. "That's my name isn't it?"_

 _For some reason she shook her head slightly, looking downcast, but she was looking him in the eye again so soon he was uncertain as to what it could mean. "Do you have a middle name?"_

 _He nodded slowly, not sure where this was going. "Christopher." He'd found it written in one of his father's journals a few months ago. He half-winced at the memory of the slap he'd received in retribution for his curiosity._

 _Inexplicably, she flinched again. "So your initials are JC." She confirmed, looking as though he'd stolen a family heirloom. "JC, JC. Can I call you Jacey?"_

 _"No," he said, instantly horrified. Then he gave it some thought. "You can call me Jace though."_

 _She nodded. "Okay,_ Jace _." She said pointedly. He smiled; he liked that name._

 _He would go on to find that he didn't like it so much in the years to come when she would call him "Jacey" just to tease him._

 _"So, Seraphina," Jace said in the sudden silence. "How well do you fight?"_

 _"Don't call me that." She snapped suddenly, eyes blazing._

 _He furrowed his brows. "What should I call you then?"_

 _She hesitated at that moment, flicking her eyes towards the closed library door, and the white-haired man undoubtedly standing behind it. "Never mind," she rushed out, though the reason for her sudden change of heart was nowhere near apparent. "It's nothing. My name's Seraphina."_

 _She looked back at him then, and smiled. More smirked, actually. "And I fight_ very _well, indeed."_

* * *

New York, 2007

Jace Wayland did his utmost to hide the fact he was limping as he walked into Taki's at what any reasonable person would consider an outrageous hour to be up. In truth, he, his parabatai, and Izzy had been up since eleven pm, tracking down the demon that had been reported to be sighted at Pandemonium, which had involved a tiring run in circles throughout the majority of the city until they'd finally caught and killed it in Central Park.

He shot a self-assured sidelong smirk at Alec as he shuffled with a significant lack of grace through the door, letting it swing shut behind him. Isabelle was already seated in a booth along the right hand wall, the second furthest one from the door, ordering in her imperially haughty manner the meals that the three of them had every time they came. The werewolf waiter looked faintly irritated and distrustful, but then again, that was how most Downworlders acted around Shadowhunters.

He hid his sigh of relief as he slid into the side opposite Izzy, and could lean his weight on something other than his injured leg. Isabelle's pointed look told him he hadn't been as subtle as he had intended. He just stuck his tongue out at her as Alec slid in opposite him, next to his sister.

Amusement still ringing in his chest, he surveyed the room another waitress - A faerie; Kaelie? - walked towards the kitchens. He gaze caught and snagged on an occurrence that was beyond unusual. It flat out _never happened._

A vampire and a werewolf sharing the same booth and laughing like friends.

Like _friends_.

Their species' were meant to be mortal enemies.

He was up and moving before he'd blinked and rethought his actions, the pain throbbing from his wounded leg pushed to some distant corner of his mind. The rest of his brain power - which was a significant amount - was focused on the anomaly sitting before him.

The vampire had the signature dead white skin of his kind, and long brown hair. Jace didn't recognise him from the New York clan, so he presumed he was a newly turned without a clan yet. He frowned infinitesimally. The Praetor Lupus should have caught up with him by now.

The werewolf was a girl with coffee brown skin and braided hair, with odd amber eyes, and the gold-ringed pupils of lycanthropy. He thought he distantly recognised her from that one time he'd been sent down to deal with Luke Garroway, the head of the werewolf pack. Luke had been daunting, even for a Shadowhunter as advanced as him, and had looked at him with confusion, like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

Jace hadn't known what to make of it.

The girl's head jerked up and expression of undoubtable displeasure darkened her face. At her violent change of mood the vampire looked round, more annoyed than curious. He looked faintly terrified when he first laid eyes on Jace, like a deer in the headlights, but the look swiftly faded, to be replaced with the wary, careful expression Jace had become so familiar with.

As he further neared the table, he saw that there was a third occupant: a girl, most likely a mundane with the Sight, with fiery red hair and a face wrapped protectively in shadow.

Jace didn't need the footsteps behind him to know that Izzy and Alec had his back. After all, they always did. "This is unusual," he drawled. He could feel the tension in the air multiplying and multiplying. It was significantly more than he was used to. What he didn't know, was why.

"What do you want, Nephilim?" The werewolf girl snapped. The vampire remained silent, but then again, that wasn't unusual for the newly turned. New life, new world; it could all be a bit disorientating.

"Maia," the girl in the back gently chastised, appraising the three threatening Shadowhunters with wide emerald eyes. _Maia_ paid no attention, and cast a defensive, almost desperate look back at her friend.

"Well," Jace continued, noting Alec and Izzy's warning looks but paying them no heed. "I simply wanted to come over and observe the phenomenon that is a vampire and a werewolf in each other's presence without hostility, but now I see that you two aren't alone." He nodded at the redhead. "The peacekeeper, I presume?"

"You presume wrong," the werewolf snapped, when the mundane was silent. "Simon and I can get on perfectly well."

"And Clary usually isn't here anyway," the vampire - _Simon_ \- cut in belligerently, but with the knowing, panicked glint of his eye that betrayed he was lying. Jace narrowed his aureate eyes.

"I think _Clary_ can speak for herself, can she not?" He countered with a dangerous smirk, acting as the Devil's Advocate. He knew just how to unnerve people and for now, that was the game he was playing. Hodge - or, Angel forbid, Isabelle - would likely lecture him about antagonising their allies later, but right now this was too entertaining.

He was tossed two glares in response; the mundane either trying to be unobtrusive, or a natural wallflower.

Clary leaned forward. When the light hit her face, the dazzling contrast of contours and shadows was instantly familiar to Jace, but he had no idea why. The only redhead he'd ever met before other than the Seelie Queen - maybe he'd got it wrong; perhaps she was a faerie of royal blood? Would that be why? - was Seraphina, and she was dead. His father had told him himself, moments before the people who'd murdered her and her father had come for the two of them. Moments before he'd been shoved into the cupboard to hide (or cower) and he'd been forced to watch as Michael Wayland was slaughtered.

"Have we met before?" he asked, slight ashamed to _have_ to ask. He analysed the way she tensed from the attention, but could deduce nothing from it. After all, for anyone - faerie or mundane - close to Downworlders, meeting with Shadowhunters would be nerve wracking, after all the horror stories she was sure to have heard. "I'm sure we have, but I just can't place it."

He didn't know what to make of her hunted expression, or the careful answer she gave: "I can't imagine why."

* * *

 **So I did have something going where I don't post a chapter until I've finished the one after it, so I don't make people wait months and months for an update if I ever get writer's block or have no time to write, but that dissolved pretty quickly and it's interfering with my inspiration so I'm just going to ditch that and post this chapter as it is.**

 **What did you think?**


	5. To Deal With Demons

**To Deal Wit** **h Demons**

 _Chapter song: Live Like Legends by Ruelle_

Idris, 2001

 _The demon - a Du'sien demon, he believed the Angel's children, the Shadowhunters, called him - crouched in the cool emerald shadows of the sunlit glade. He'd never been this close to Alicante before without getting slaughtered and sent back to Edom. The Shadowhunter had summoned him, had given him a bypass through the wards, but he still felt their power humming through his body, crying out against his very existence on this plane of reality, trying to do their job and repel it. It was a minor discomfort though; a small price to pay for the luxuries Earth had to offer._

 _The tall, white-haired man with the delicate face that contrasted his bulky frame had summoned him, and bid he wait out here, on the very edge of the glade, safely tucked away in the shadows. "Wait for someone to come by," he had said, "amongst the undergrowth so you aren't touched by the sun. Then when the Nephilim pass, attack them."_

 _He had no intention of attacking them in broad daylight, but neither did he have any intention of disobeying. If those who passed were truly Nephilim, then the moment they realised a demon had penetrated their sacred land they would attack him first, trying to either send him home or drive him away. If he could draw them into the shadows, then he could overpower them._

 _He briefly wondered why the Shadowhunter would want to kill his own kind. But the thought paled in the shadow of his anticipation for the hunt to begin._

 _And so he waited._

 _As a Du'sien demon in his true form, he was little more than a unstructured lump of greyish jelly with a pulsing black core the size of a human's fist. Therefore, he had no ears to prick or nose to raise when he caught the faintest sound and smell of two Nephilim, one male, one female, walking a convoluted route in his direction. Nevertheless, he readied himself for the hunt._

 _He morphed into a more fearsome, lethal shape. What was the name of those large golden creatures with the teeth and claws? A lone...? No, a lion. He morphed into a lion, the striking gold of his fur suddenly stifling in the spring heat, catching the filtered light and making him a beacon for miles around. Usually his kind would utilise the element of surprise to catch their prey, or stay inconspicuous when a Shadowhunter was near, a trick that had massively decreased in success since that fool of a Nephilim had invented the Sensor. But right now, he needed to use the Shadowhunters' "noble" cause against them, drawing them into the shadows to their own demise._

 _The approaching Nephilim stepped into the glade._

 _He forced himself not to do a double take. They were children. The Shadowhunter had wanted to kill his own kind's_ children _._

 _It didn't matter to the demon; prey was prey. But he had thought it mattered to humans, even when they were part angel._

 _They were young, about ten years old, but with none of the baby fat most ten year olds - even if they were Shadowhunters - sported. They were figures of bone, skin and muscle, the only difference between them and their elders was their inferior size. And even the boy looked close to catching that, towering over the girl, who in contrast looked like she was abnormally small. Both of them appeared to be crowned with fire: the girl with the crimson hair of the deepest inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, the boy with the golden flickering locks the colour of a candle flame. Both shone with so much heavenly light it hurt the demon's newly formed eyes to look at. They shone brighter than most of their kind._

 _They had barely stepped into the glade when the girl's eyes, as green as the forest they'd emerged from, latched onto his fine coat. She narrowed her eyes in confusion, then widened them in realisation, the boy following her through the stages a pulse later._

 _He may be in lion form, but he retained his excellent sight and hearing. They immediately tensed into fighting stances as they crept towards him, the girl whispering, "Du'sien demon," to her friend. He rose to his feet, still shaded by the woods, wondering how she knew what he was. He had impersonated a lion, had he not? How did she know so quickly? Were lions uncommon in this area?_

 _As he wondered, he too, braced himself for a fight. And with a flash of red as the girl dived, the fight began._

 _He let out a cry as the runed metal blade dug a long gash in his left flash and blood as black as a moonless night poured down his leg. As he staggered back the dagger stuck in his side and was wrenched from the girl's hand, her palm now slick with midnight blood. He could see the skin around the splatter started to get red and irritated as his blood burned her. She shook her hand in an unconscious gesture of pain, eyes fixed on him._

 _Seeing the girl in pain, and seeing the shade of blood the demon bled seemed to cement something with the boy. He flew at the demon and slashed a shallow but painful slice along his muzzle, scratching out one of his eyes with the motion. The demon howled again in agony, and distantly felt two thuds in his left shoulder as the children threw daggers in unison. He collapsed, lashing out with one paw and his claws on the way down. By sheer luck he scraped the girl's shin, and she staggered back, steps unsteady._

 _The next attack ended him. With his injured eye being the one turned towards the deadly children, he didn't see who threw the stab but he felt the long blade carve a burning path through the skin and fur, spitting the veins and spilling blood down to the hilt, through the muscle between his ribs and puncture his heart and lungs. He felt the hot blood leak out into his lungs and gasped for breath, floundering like a fish. The sword was drawn back, and footsteps receded._

 _As his vision darkened, he saw the Shadowhunter who'd summoned him step into the glade. He saw him nod at the girl, and nod at the boy, but whilst he faced the boy his expression was one of disappointment, like the boy had failed a test._

 _Then the demon saw no more._

New York, 2007

Clary left the blonde boy and his raven-haired companions in Taki's with a profound sense of relief.

After her cryptic answer (in retrospect, maybe cryptic answers weren't the best way to get someone to stop bugging you; if the person was persistent, it just led to more questions) the Shadowhunters - well, only Jace really - had tried questioning her further but she set her jaw and remained silent until he got the hint and let the matter drop. It had taken a while, but eventually his incessant inquiries pattered out to breathless silence, and he took a deep breath, gave Maia and Simon another disbelieving look, and sauntered back to his table, where the waiter stood with three steaming meals and an impatient, pissed off look on his face.

Once she had helped Maia finish her drink in under two minutes (Simon still hadn't adapted to eating human food) the three of them got out of the restaurant as soon as possible. The dawn as just starting to touch the horizon, red seeping into the clouds and turning the black sky indigo. Clary reached up to let the streaming light run over her fingers, but whether it was in benediction or blessing she didn't know.

She drew a portal for Simon, who ducked through it with a terrified glance at the rising sun. He vanished into sapphire expanse, and the gateway closed behind him. Clary didn't hope he got home safe and well; she knew he would. Simon always did.

She shot a tired smile at Maia, who, she now noticed in the light of the new day, looked absolutely exhausted. She wondered how long she'd been awake, beating herself up about Bat.

Clary reached out a hand to the taller girl. "Hey, Maia, you know that you can count on me, right?" She asked, the worry evident in her face and tone.

Maia nodded her head, looking down at their intertwined hands briefly. "I know." She dragged her eyes up to Clary's face, then fastened them on something behind her. They widened drastically as she froze. "Demon," she murmured. Clary froze too, then slowly turned around.

It was a Drevak demon, resembling nothing more than an overgrown maggot with its bulbous white body, crawling along and sniffing the air intensely. It's mouth was open and gaping; the spines it had instead of teeth tinged with green. Clary reached for her stele and cancelled the run on her calf. Instantly she felt strength and power flood her as the runes' effects were reactivated.

"Clary!" Maia hissed, grabbing her hand and stepping close to her, so they were conversing in angry whispers. "Are you mad? There are Shadowhunters in there!" She nodded her head at Taki's. "They'll see you!"

"It's a demon, Maia," Clary responded simply, stepping back and around as she drew a dagger the length of her forearm from inside her jacket. "This is what I was born to do. If they see me, let them see me. I can't run and hide forever."

Maia took a deep breath, then nodded. She too readied herself to fight. Claws shot out of the tips of her fingers and her canines grew into jagged fangs. The half transformation meant she didn't go full wolf, but a light sheen of hair covered her limbs and face.

The Drevak wriggled round and fixed its protruding eyes on the two of them.

They launched into action. Clary threw the dagger with a lethal precision and it hit home as it sank into the soft flesh of its side. The thing let out an unearthly scream and threw itself at Maia as she raked her claws against it's abdomen. She nimbly rolled out of the way and skipped back in line with Clary.

The Drevak, despite not having a visible face to show expressions on, now looked severely disgruntled, with blood pumping from the lacerations it'd already acquired in the folds of it's squishy flesh. Clary ran at it again and jumped, sparing a moment for a panicked glance back the way they'd come. If the Shadowhunters heard the screams, they would surely come.

Just before she took off she yanked another weapon out of her boot, this time a seraph blade, and as she jumped she whispered " _Uriel_ " and drove the adamas blade into where the Drevak's heart should beat. Instantly she heard her father's voice, as unwelcome as it had been the day she'd left, telling her not the go for the heart but for decapitation; not all demons had hearts.

But it was a seraph blade. The heavenly fire compressed in the holy material was released into whatever the monster was made of, and the Drevak combusted even as the blade itself grew twisted and charred. Writhing in agony, the demon dislodged Clary from her perch on its back and she toppled off, forcing herself to flip and land on her feet. As it wriggled, the thrashing thing's head hit Maia and sent her flying until she collided with a wall and crumpled, her face contorted in too much pain for comfort.

The thing reared up in a last ditch effort to kill them, but something happened too quickly for it to do so. At first Clary thought she was seeing things as a flash of gold wire fastened itself round the Drevak's torso, but when it sheared the demon in half and the two pieces fell to the ground, she saw perfectly well what had happened.

The electrum whip hit the ichor-slick ground with a thud.

Clary didn't waste a moment as she ran over to where her friend lay unconscious, fingers light as they ran over her head wound. That wasn't what was worrying her.

What was worrying her was the semi-circular bite on Maia's leg, stuck through with spines from the creatures mouth.

Clary needed to get her to Magnus _now_.

As she lifted her friend, she finally spared the tall girl standing on the other side of the alley a glance. Said girl's hand was wrapped round the handle of the whip, coated in ichor, but her hair was unruffled, like she hadn't been in a fight at all.

Isabelle Lightwood gave Clary a calculating look, taking in her runes, the gear, and the used seraph blade. "You're no mundane," was all she said.

* * *

Idris, 2007

"Jonathan," Valentine called. "Come in here."

Jonathan didn't oblige. Since Clary had run away, he'd become more rebellious against his father, and refused to be at his beck and call, like a finely trained guard dog.

Valentine walked into the library, where Jonathan was. "Didn't you hear me?"

"I heard you, Father," Jonathan replied coolly. "I just didn't care."

If Valentine was annoyed at his son's reticence, he didn't show it. "Well, you'll care about this." He walked over the where Jonathan was sprawled in the window seat and planted himself firmly in front of his son, hands tucked behind his back. "One of the Drevak demons I sent to spy on your brother brought back some interesting news."

"He is _not_ my brother." Jonathan cut in aggressively, spitting the word _brother_. "And why would you want him? We'll find Clary. Then you won't need him." Then the pieces clicked. "Only _one_ of them? What happened to the other?"

Valentine grimaced, but it had a touch of a grin to it. "It was killed."

Jonathan looked down again, bored. "I suppose it was the New York Shadowhunters?" He said disinterestedly.

"No, actually." His father told him. "It was someone else." Realisation began dawning on the younger one, lifting his head and coaxing a smile out of him for the first time in years. "That's why I think you'll be interested."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own the Mortal Instruments**

 **Review?**


	6. To Heal One's Wounds

**To Heal One's Wounds**

 _Chapter song: Top of the World by Greek Fire_

Idris, 2000

 _"What type of demon is this?" Valentine asked the nine year old girl, pointing authoritatively at the picture in the book, making sure his hand covered the rest of the page._

 _Clary squinted at the picture, taking her sweet time as she deliberated. Jonathan knew, logically, that his father probably wouldn't whip her if she got something wrong, as he did him, but he couldn't help the spike of nervousness in his chest that only grew sharper as the minutes ticked by with no answer from the redhead. Jonathan could see his father's jaw clenching and unclenching, could hear his toe tapping the ground; he was getting impatient. Time was running out._

 _"A Drevak!" Clary shouted suddenly, gleeful, and making the two men jump. She slumped back in her chair from where she'd been leaning forwards. "A Drevak! Got it!"_

 _Jonathan didn't need to look to know that a slow smile was spreading over his father's face._

 _"Well done, Seraphina," he applauded, and Jonathan noticed - as he always did - Clary's flinch as he called her by the wrong name. His little sister's name was Clarissa; Valentine didn't seem to get that. "And how can you treat a Drevak's sting?"_

 _Now with the information at the forefront of her mind, Clary couldn't get the words out fast enough. "Drevak's don't have teeth; they have venomous needles in their mouths. The firs thing you have to do is take them out of the wound to stop the skin from closing with them in, and to prevent any left over poison from seeping in. That's the most painful part." She looked up at their father for approval, and he nodded her on. "Then once that's done, and the wound in clean, several iratzes should be applied. If that's not enough, then summon in a warlock's assistance. If the invalid is a Downworlder, then summon the warlock immediately-"_

 _"We have no business treating Downworlders, Seraphina." Their father cut her off harshly. Clary folded in on herself with an almost inaudible whimper; Jonathan only heard it due to his heightened demon senses. Valentine leaned across the table and seized his daughter's chin in one hand, tilting it upwards until she was forced to look him in the eye. For a moment she looked distraught and terrified; then those emotions were shielded by a mask of apathy, just as she'd been taught. "Do you understand?"_

 _Clary tried to nod, and found she couldn't move his head due to his bruising grip. Jonathan felt a rush of anger towards the man as he noticed the beginnings of a purple splotch around the areas his fingers were. No one was allowed to hurt her._

 _"I understand, Father," she replied, and the emotion shown on her face was reflected in her voice; that same peculiar flatness that scared Jonathan almost as much as her wrath did. But he also saw the spark of hatred borne in her eyes, and watched as it began to swell._

* * *

New York, 2007

"Evidently," Clary snapped in response, as she gripped an unconscious Maia's upper arms and hauled her into a standing position, being propped up by Clary like a doll. As she inspected the wound, Clary's mind raced back to the information she'd painstakingly memorised for her slave driver of a father, and set her jaw grimly.

"Well then why did you lie?" Isabelle Lightwood countered, oblivious to her waking panic. "And how did you hide your runes?"

"Technically I didn't lie," Clary bit back, her mind instinctively resorting to playing with words in a method similar to the Fey's twisting of the truth. "I never said I was a mundane. You came to that conclusion on your own."

"Actually, it was Alec who thought you were a Sighted mundane," Isabelle commented helpfully, naming who Clary presumed was Alexander Lightwood, her brother. "Jace thought you might be a faerie. I can see where he's coming from. You do sort of look like a pixie." She wrinkled her nose. "You speak like one too."

"Listen, I don't have time for this," Clary told her bluntly, tightening her arm around Maia's waist and staggering to the alley wall. "So whatever questions you have, or will have in a moment, please refrain from asking them, and leave me to save my friends life."

She reached down to tug her stele out of her boot, and without a moment's hesitation slashed the rune for Portal into the stone with her left hand, thanking the Angel that her father had trained her to be ambidextrous. She stepped back slightly as the wall rippled like water in the wake of a boat and half closed her eyes to think of the street outside of Magnus's apartment. When she opened them, the image before her was a distorted image of the familiar street.

"Hey," Isabelle was suddenly on the other side of Maia, helping her support the weight. "I know you said no questions, although I have a _ton_ , but I'm coming with you."

Clary twisted to look at her, her glance more incredulity than anger as she processed she was serious. "You're kidding," Isabelle's face was honest and blunt. "No!"

"Your friend is a werewolf," the brunette replied coolly. "The Accords clearly state that a Shadowhunter cannot leave a Downworlder with a potentially fatal injury without at least attempting to get help. As you haven't outright admitted you're a Shadowhunter, by letting the two of you go off alone would be breaking the Accords."

Clary growled low in her throat, but they were wasting too much time. She reluctantly allowed Isabelle to retake Maia's arm and they stepped through the Portal.

The redhead's feet had barely hit to ground when she was dropping Maia's arm and leaving Isabelle to bear the weight. She bounded up the steps and jabbed the doorbell to Magnus's apartment several times, the sharp rings pickaxes slamming into her skull. She felt like collapsing from relief when Magnus's annoyed voice rang out, "Who is this, and why are you so annoying?"

"Magnus!" She cried, pressing the speaking button. "It's Clary."

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Nephilim?" Came the dry response.

"Maia," Clary choked out. "She was stung by a Drevak. I've taken the spines out, but she needs-"

"A warlock," Magnus finished, and the same tone of worry that racked her voice coloured his. "Come on up."

Once they'd stumbled up to the right floor, they found Magnus's door open and the warlock himself standing in the doorway. "Bring her in," he said, and Clary and Isabelle strode in to dump her on the sofa. Clary rolled up Maia's jeans to expose the jagged cut, which had turned a faint tinge of green. Clary fell her stomach lurch.

Magnus stepped forward, and noticed Isabelle for the first time. "What are you doing here, Lightwood?" He sneered, the corners of his mouth turning down.

"Saving Maia's life first, questions and explanations later!" Clary snapped, and Magnus gave her a withering glare. She gave him an apologetic look, and he turned to the incapacitated werewolf. Out of the corner of her eye Clary saw Isabelle open her mouth, but Clary snapped "That goes for you too."

Isabelle Lightwood, who didn't strike Clary as one who took kindly to being given orders, sent her an indignant glare, but apparently saw something in the redhead's face, because she too shut up.

Clary sighed then, letting the tension bleed out of her posture. Only she had the wherewithal to cause such a kerfuffle at seven am. She sank into the sofa opposite and closed her eyes, distantly feeling the cushion sag as Isabelle perched daintily next to her.

When she registered a faint light shining through her eyelids, she peeled them open to see Maia and Magnus encased in a shimmering blue cage of light. At first she was vaguely nervous, then she noted Maia's steady, even breathing and forced herself to relax. Maia was fine. They were all fine. Everyone had survived.

Magnus turned then, and the light died, leaving Maia sleeping troubled, but restfully. Magnus pulled up an armchair and surveyed the two Shadowhunters in his apartment carefully, with no small amount of irritation. "Am I going to get any explanations as to why Maia almost died at such an ungodly hour now, or not?" He asked.

Clary sighed. "Let me ask one question first." She turned to Isabelle. "Why were you alone? What happened to your brothers?"

Isabelle's eyes flashed at Clary's nerve, but she answered, "Alec and Jace went to scout out Pandemonium, to check if the demon we took out earlier this morning had any friends. they assigned me to follow you. Alec thought there might be something that you weren't letting on." She paused, then very pointedly looked around the room, lingering on Clary's runes, Magnus, and Maia. "Clearly, he was right."

Clary huffed. "Okay then." She turned to Magnus. "To answer your questions, since you seem to have fewer than Isabelle: I, as usual, woke up at four am and visited Simon, who I knew was nocturnal. We went to Taki's, where we met Maia, who'd been beating herself up about her break up. Whilst we were there, Isabelle and her brothers showed up and spoke to us. When we left, Simon went home again, as it was sunrise, and then Maia and I saw a Drevak demon. So we fought it, killed it, but Maia got injured, and Isabelle - who'd been the one to finally end it - came out near the end and insisted she follow me here." She slumped back. "Does that suffice?"

Magnus nodded. "It does."

"My turn," Isabelle butted in, before Clary had the chance to turn to her. "Who are you?"

Clary gave her a quick smile, then held out her right hand. "I'm Clary - short for Clarissa. Obviously a Shadowhunter."

Isabelle blanched. "I've never heard of you. And we're the only Shadowhunters in New York."

Clary rolled her eyes. "Obviously not. Besides, there's like five hundred Shadowhunting families, isn't there? Would you really expect yourself to know everyone?" Isabelle shook her head mutely. "Exactly."

"Okay, then," Isabelle continued slowly. "How did you do that thing with the Portal? And that thing where all your runes disappeared?"

"You mean this?" Clary reached down to draw the rune on her calf again. Isabelle's eyes widened as Clary's heavily inked flesh turned blank. She nodded. "Oh, I can make runes. I've got no idea why or how; it's just something I've always been able to do."

Isabelle narrowed her eyes. "You're lying."

Clary's heart skipped slightly. She wasn't lying, no. She _didn't_ know why she had that particular talent. But what with how Jonathan's demon blood had. . . _changed_ him, she had her suspicions. "I swear on the Angel that I haven't lied to you once."

Isabelle looked fairly shocked at this revelation. "Oh."

The word was a catalyst for thought. Clary's mind flicked through everything that had happened to her since she'd thrown that stone at Simon's window this morning. Maia breaking up with Bat. Coming the closest she'd been to Angel Boy since he'd been sent away. Him still bearing the nickname she'd given him. Herself facing the Drevak. Maia getting injured. Getting confronted by Isabelle Lightwood.

She felt the fatigue that should have rightfully accompanied all these things catching up to her, weighing down her limbs and making her curl up on Magnus's sofa with a sigh. She felt her eyelids closing but before she fell asleep again she uttered the words:

"'Oh' is right, Isabelle Lightwood."


	7. To Trust Those Around You

**To Trust Those Around You**

 _Chapter song: Heartbeat Song by Kelly Clarkson_

Idris, 2001

 _Jace and Seraphina sat on the roof of the manor. Of course, Jace's father didn't know they were up there - Michael Wayland would never have let his two warriors risk their lives for a dare - but when Seraphina had looked at him earlier that evening, challenge sparking a fire in her familiar green eyes, he found that despite the ludicrous impracticality of her dare, he couldn't refuse._

 _Naturally, it hadn't taken any amount of persuasion to get her to follow him up._

 _So now they both sat on the slope of the manor roof, feet swinging a little way above the gutter. Over the horizon was the famously beautiful Idrisian sunset, an explosion of fiery colours. Only a sliver remained of the sun itself, a crimson semi-circle like a slice of an apple. But the colours of the sky around it rippled like molten gold, and if Jace looked straight upwards, the sky was a soft violet. Next to him, Seraphina's hand twitched, which he knew was a sure fire sign that she wanted to draw what she saw in front of her. Jace smiled fondly._

 _They hadn't said anything for quite a while before Sera hopped up and starting walking along to edge. Jace immediately scrambled into a crouch, watching with wide eyes as his friend stood balanced right where the solid surface ended, with nothing but the slightest stumble between her and the ground quite a distance below._

 _Jace placed his hands very deliberately on the roof tiles, and hissed, "Seraphina!" with a panicked urgency. He'd noticed she'd stopped flinching whenever he called her that - though he still didn't have the faintest clue why she'd flinched in the first place - but she still cringed almost unnoticeably when his father called her that. It was part of the reason that most of the time he liked to call her by his nickname 'Sera' instead._

 _She only laughed, tipping her head back as she faced away from him, and he found his eyes fixed to the way her curls rippled down her back in the same fluid motion that the colours rippled across the sky. "Don't worry, Jacey," she said, and the nickname that had originally meant to be a tease, had almost become endearing. It reassured him slightly. "I do this loads at home. Whenever I'm upset, head for high ground."_

 _Jace cocked his head as the piece of information clicked amongst the picture he had of her, which was both colourful, but almost empty. He knew her - knew her smile, knew her personality, knew_ her _\- but he couldn't possibly say where she came from, what her father - his father's best friend - was called, or even what her last name was._

 _He tentatively rose to his feet, and slowly edged his way to stand next to her. She glanced at him, smirking, then her smirk softened into something else as she processed how scared he was. She sat down, and he sat with her._

 _They were silent for a little while longer, until the night sky was it's signature shade of indigo, before he spoke, seemingly at random. "Can I kiss you?"_

 _She blinked her large eyes, and he knew her well enough to know that that was her way off showing she was caught off guard. He knew that she'd been taught - like he had - that to show emotion was to show weakness, and he prided himself that she trusted him enough to betray her surprise to him, even with as little a gesture as that._

 _"Um," she said, and he felt a rush of warmth that she trusted him to even reveal her indecisiveness. "Why?"_

 _He shrugged. It was thought he'd mulled over before, but never believed he would act on. "I've read about it, and I wondered what it was like."_

 _She considered it for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay."_

 _Heart pounding for a reason he couldn't quite explain, he leaned forward. She reciprocated the gesture, until their lips were millimetres apart, and he could have counted the tiny flecks of gold in her eyes, the long eyelashes that were brushing his cheekbones._

 _"What are you waiting for?" She breathed, and her breath fanned out across his face. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't unpleasant either._

 _"I don't know," he admitted candidly. And before he had the chance to lean forward, she did, and her lips were on his. Warm, and soft, and steady, but he didn't feel the electricity described in the sparse few romance novels he'd managed to read without his father catching him._

 _Maybe they needed to do that mouth opening thing, he thought, though the idea sounded vaguely revolting. So he tried, Seraphina's lips opening under his own, but when he tried to slip his tongue into her mouth, she pulled away, gagging._

 _"Ew!" She shrieked, and in some distant part of him he registered that it was funny how she could take out the most disgusting of demons, but her stomach couldn't handle what they just did. "Why did you do that!? It wasn't too bad until you tried to do that." She crinkled her nose, wiping her mouth with the back of her palm._

 _"I just read about it," he defended. "I didn't know it would be like that!"_

 _She huffed. "Fine." She glanced downwards, at her swinging feet as they beat a regular pattern into the honey coloured stone of the manor. "We should get down before it gets dark and my -_ your _\- father comes looking for us."_

 _"Okay," he said in reply, with a lingering sense of disappointment that he couldn't pinpoint. She shuffled over to the pipe they'd used to climb up and slid down in, leaving Jace alone on the roof, with nothing but the slowly appearing stars for company._

 _He didn't wave goodbye to her as she left with his father later that night, presuming with a child's naivety that he'd have many more years to spend with her, and not realising that the next time he saw her would be the last._

* * *

New York, 2007

The rattling sound of the lift as it ascended broke Jace out of his incredibly light nap. He jerked out of his bed and was out of the door in a heartbeat. They'd sent Isabelle to follow and keep tabs on the redheaded mundane, Alec being Alec and naturally suspicious of her, which in hindsight perhaps wasn't the fairest thing to do considering she was just as tired as they were. But it needed to be done, and now, looking down at the scars left behind by the demon they'd encountered when they'd returned to Pandemonium, he was considering whether or not Isabelle was the one who'd got the best deal.

He stepped into the corridor and jogged down the stairs just as the lift halted its noisy procession and the doors squealed open. Just as he expected - considering Robert, Maryse and Max were in Alicante and Alec and Hodge were already in the Institute - Isabelle stood there, whip coiled like a several bracelets around her arm. Her smooth face was carved into a severe look, one that Jace was fairly sure meant she was thinking over something, but she beckoned Jace to the kitchen, yelling for her brother to come down.

He stepped in the moment she gathered bread to make what he supposed was meant to be breakfast - or lunch, he thought, as he glanced at the hands on his watch pointing to the number one - and gently but firmly ushered her into a seat. He then picked up the discarded bread loaf and began to slice it into neat, even pieces.

"Did you find out anything about her?" He inquired as he rifled through the fridge for the cheese. Alec walked in at that moment only to voice the same question, resulting in Jace throwing an irritated glance at his _parabatai._

Isabelle fiddled with the whip at her forearm before she answered. "The Mundie's a Shadowhunter." She said bluntly, causing Alec to raise a brow, and Jace to drop the sandwich he held, the two pieces falling onto the board with a thud.

Jace looked up. "Seriously?" He asked. "Is she at least half-fey?" He added, brain ticking. That would explain her careful words, and dainty face, and her ethereal beauty.

"As far as I know," Isabelle answered delicately, placing her palms flat on the table, "no."

Fortunately, it was Alec to speak them, because Jace was too shocked at the fact he was wrong. "She's Nephilim?" He asked again. Isabelle confirmed it with a nod, looking irritated at having to repeat herself. "Then what's she doing in New York? We're the only Shadowhunters here. Shouldn't she be. . . not here?"

Isabelle shrugged. She reached out to pick up a bright green apple from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, and neatly bit into it. "That's what I said. All she said in response was ' _Evidently you're not_ '. Besides, she might not live in New York. I mean sure, she's friendly with some of the Downworlders here, and is close to Magnus Bane-"

"How'd you know that?" Jace interrupted. "How much did you stalk her?"

"-Close enough to merit him healing her friend without demanding payment at least." She continued, ignoring Jace, but shooting daggers at him. "I was getting to that bit. Once you people left to fight demons, I followed the girl to just a few alleys over to find her and her werewolf friend fighting a Drevak demon. How did your Sensors miss that? Anyway, I helped kill it, and the werewolf got injured, then the girl made a Portal-"

"So all of a sudden she's a warlock as well?!" Jace exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "Make up your mind, Iz."

Izzy glared at him again, but ignored him again. She was good at that. "-And I questioned her about it, and she bit my head off, saying I was wasting time and that her friend didn't have long. So I followed her through the Portal to where she'd taken her friend to Magnus Bane, who healed her. Then she answered my questions." A pause. "By the way she said her name was Clary."

"Like the herb, clary sage," Jace mused. "That's a nice name."

Alec was a bit more practical about this new twist of information. "Do you think she's still at Bane's?" He asked, standing up. Isabelle nodded. "Great. We need to get over there and question her a bit more thoroughly. Not that I don't trust you, Iz," he added at his sister's offended expression, "but we just need to be sure. A Shadowhunter none of us have heard of, coming to New York without warning and spending more time with Downworlders than her own kind? Something's fishy here."

"I agree," Jace said, hastily wrapping the three sandwiches in cling film and shoving them into his gear pocket. "Plus, I kind of want to see this for myself. Let go meet her."

The ride down to the street was spent mainly with Alec grilling Isabelle for the details of what the Clary girl had said, Jace hanging back silently. He couldn't stop the thoughts of a long lost friend that this Clary girl brought up. He absently touched his lips when he remembered what had happened the penultimate time he'd seen her.

They stepped out of the Institute, taking care to ensure they were wearing glamours, and that nobody was looking. As Jace twisted round to get one last glimpse of the church, he saw a flash of white. As he focused in on that direction, he could just make out a tall teenage boy with hair as white as snow, glowering over at him. But when he took a step closer to get a better look, the guy disappeared.

Trying to dismiss thoughts that he may have just seen his father's ghost - or teenage doppelgänger - he jogged to catch up with his siblings.

 **Sorry this is sort of a filler, or if it's too boring. I tried to update as quickly as possible. I'll be sure to make the next chapter more exciting, once I get round to writing it.**

 **What did you think? Review?**


	8. To Face The Forgotten

**To Face The Forgotten**

 _Chapter song: Viva la Vida by Coldplay_

Idris, 2001

 _"Clary?" Jonathan called, taking care to keep his voice down lest he wake his father up, as he pushed the door to his sister's bedroom open. His demon sight meant that even in the dark he could make out her frame nestled into the bed sheets, curled into position like a fetus. Once the door opened, the sounds of her tears was almost deafening to him; he'd been able to hear her sobbing from his room down the hallway. "What's wrong?"_

 _Clary gave another sniffle before she dragged herself into a sitting position. Jonathan restrained himself from looking down and relaxed when she hugged her pillow to her chest. Clary wiped the back of her hand across her nose, and finally said, in a shaky voice, "Father's sending Jace away."_

 _This caught his attention. "Who?" He asked, just to get her to reiterate it, because a part of him had always hoped that Clary didn't care enough about the Angel Boy to cry at his potential absence._

 _"Jace." She repeated. Then she said the words he'd always hated, because they insinuated that another was needed as replacement. "The other Jonathan."_

 _Jonathan gritted his teeth. "And why are you upset about that? I'm sure Father has his reasons for sending him away. The boy will probably be safer wherever he goes." A part of him recoiled at the thought of approving any of Valentine's decisions, but he had to in this case. Angel Boy was an unnecessary burden, who stole his father's attention from him. Clary did too, but she made up for it and more with the amount she bestowed on_ him.

 _He just hoped that Clary didn't hate him for that conclusion._

 _Clary shook her head fervently. "No! Jace is one of my best friends, along with you of course. I don't want him to go!" At the end of this she buried her tear stained face into her pillow, and sobbed into it._

 _Jonathan slowly approached the bed. He was at an impasse with himself. On one hand, he didn't want Clary to view this_ Jace _as an equal to her brother. She was_ his _sister, and she shouldn't be crying over someone he was probably eventually going to kill anyway._

 _But on the other hand, his dead heart ached to see her tears as they fell, glistening, from their perch on her coppery eyelashes. He found he wanted to kiss them away, to hold her and rock her until she fell asleep. . ._

 _But he couldn't. She would hate him. And then he would hate himself even more than he already did for pushing away the only person who has ever loved him._

 _So he didn't say anything and simply held her until her sobs quieted. Then he kissed her forehead, lips lingering for far longer than what was socially acceptable, but she didn't know that. And then he crept out, and he heard her breaths steadying him even as his world shifted beneath his feet._

* * *

New York, 2007

"No offence, Clarissa," Magnus said from where they both sat on the sofa, as they watched Maia with loving, concerned eyes. Isabelle had left around an hour ago and since then Maia's breathing had steadied remarkably, until - if Clary ignored the jagged scar slightly elevated from her coffee-coloured skin - she almost looked like she'd simply fallen asleep there by accident. "But you are the single most masochistic person I've ever met in my whole seven hundred years of living."

Clary raised her eyebrows, and remarked, "Seven hundred, huh?" She gave him a knowing look, to which he scowled in response. He frequently changed his age to suit him, and had once tried to convince Clary that he'd ben alive to meet Ramesses the Great. "And no offence taken."

Magnus reached over the small mound of pillows piled between them to touch her cheek in a quick, affectionate gesture. Clary relished it, if only because he did it in a fatherly sort of way, and she'd been starved of fatherly affection her whole life. "You never know when to stop, do you?" Magnus continued softly. "And it worries me. Hell, it worries _all_ of us. Me and Simon and Jocelyn and Luke and Maia-" he nodded at the unconscious girl. "-you terrify us to Idris and back with how often you get yourself into scrapes. Yes, we get you want to save the Downworlders, but. . ." He sighed. "Maybe try to save yourself sometimes as well. Lots of people care about you, biscuit. We wouldn't want to let them down."

Clary just nodded mutely, and Magnus sighed. They both knew that Clary would continue to throw herself into deadly situations, and would continue to get lucky.

They also knew that one day, her Angel given luck would run out.

Clary took a shaky breath. She couldn't put it into words; couldn't explain why this meant so much to her. It was all she'd even known, fighting and killing and hurting others. She'd never known any different. And as much as she wished that she had a talent that could bring beauty to the world instead of painting it in blood, she didn't. And she never would.

The unspoken words hung between them like a glass ball held aloft by their silence. It became heavier and heavier, until they heard the shrill ringing of a bell, and the ball dropped to the floor and smashed.

Clary jumped to her feet in a predatory instinctual reaction to being caught off guard. She even half bared her teeth as she scrambled at her belt for a weapon. All she managed to pull out was a stele and a long dagger - a _kindjal_ \- but she felt more reassured with them in her hands.

Magnus huffed a breath - half exasperated at the interruption, half amused at her violent reaction - then strode over and hit the speak button to bark out an irritated "What?"

There was a pause, then the shuffling over feet, and Clary's eyes widened unperceptively as she heard the clink of weapons. Her heart started beating very fast.

However, it slowed drastically as the voice came through the speakers - scratchy, but recognisable. Just because it wasn't who she thought it was though, didn't mean she was anymore relaxed. "This is Jace Wayland, Alec Lightwood, and Isabelle Lightwood," said the voice, which Clary recognised as Angel Boy's. Her heart did an uneven flop, and she frowned at the sensation. She hadn't spoken to him in six years before this morning - had barely even _thought_ of him - so why was she back to her preteen crush again?

Magnus ground his teeth, and gave Clary a sidelong glance, so heavy with parental concern her throat momentarily closed up. "What do you want?" He snapped into the microphone.

Jace chuckled darkly, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up - and not in a good way. She knew that her father had trained him to be ruthless when he didn't get what he wanted, until the denier submitted. If he _dared_ try that on Magnus. . . "Relax," he said calmly, but she could hear the ever so slightly threatening undertone to it, like a shark's fin viewed through murky water. She imagined him throwing his hands up in mock surrender. "We just want to have a little chat with the girl - Clary, was it?"

Magnus immediately flicked his gaze with Clary and muttered, "Give me a second."

The reply was instant, the words drawled through the speakers. "Take all the time you need to negotiate potential escapes for the girl. We have time."

But Magnus wasn't listening. "Biscuit," he take, decisively taking his finger off of the button. "You could probably get out of here in time. I could say you've already left." Clary was silent for a moment. "Clary? You in there?

Slowly, but surely, Clary shook her head. "No." She said. "I don't trust them not to turn me in to the Clave - or turn _you_ in." She added. "And I don't want to risk them barging in here with their Open runes, claiming official Clave business, and potentially interfering with Maia's recovery. I'll go out to meet them."

"Are you sure?"

Clary stood, grabbing her leather jacket from where she'd flung it on the coffee table, and patted her weapons belt. "I'm sure," she said over her shoulder, as she opened the door with one hand.

Magnus gave a sigh of resignation and jabbed the button. "Alright, Nephilim, she's headed down."

He didn't linger around to chat after that, but as he walked away, he picked up on Wayland's last few words - so carelessly and sarcastically said, that they almost sounded bitter. "Much appreciated, warlock."

The door slammed behind Clary as she jogged down the stairs. Once she'd reached the bottom, inexplicably proud of herself for not even being winded, she pressed the button to open the door, and stepped back as it swung inwards. Then she looked up, expressionless, to meet the stares of Jace Wayland and his posse.

Jace's was by far the most intense. Isabelle - having already had her answers - simply looked bored, occasionally casting irritated glances at her brother. Clary hid her smirk, which was probably a good thing judging by the suspicion on Alec Lightwood's face as he looked at her.

But Jace.

Jace's eyes seemed to have turned to living flames as he scrutinised every tiny thing about her. She saw his brows crease infinitesimally as his gaze hopped along her arms - covered by the jacket she wore. In fact, all of her runed skin was covered, and he seemed slightly vexed by that fact.

But he didn't just scrutinise that. He stared at every inch of her face, and she felt herself growing antsy under his gaze, somehow both terrified and hopeful that he would recognise her as the friend who had 'died' six years ago.

She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when his gaze fell away, clearly unsatisfied by whatever he found.

"So. . ." Clary began. "What was it you wanted again?"

The self assured smirk returned, and Clary found herself wanting to smack it off, to scratch away at the walls he'd built around him until she found the boy she'd known. She resisted the urge, and smiled back with an eerie darkness. She saw the flicker of unease in his eyes - like an ingot dropped in a pool of molten gold - before it was gone like it'd never been there at all.

Alexander Lightwood stepped forward again, clearly tired of the silent challenges flying between them. She turned her look on him and he paused, then held his arms up in surrender. "We just want to talk to you," he assured her, and Clary admired him for his humility. "That's all, I swear on the Angel."

She smiled again, this time more reassuring. She saw him relax minutely. "By all means, Alec Lightwood." She gestured them down to the street, and they reluctantly turned their backs on her to walk down, Clary not far behind. "Talk."

* * *

Idris, 2007

"If we know where she is, Father, then what are we waiting for?"

"You want her to run off again, even when we _do_ have her back?"

A brief silence proved his point, before Jonathan gnashed his teeth in a snarl. "I won't let her leave."

"Do you honestly think you could stop her, if she was trying her absolute hardest, if she was dead set on getting out of here?"

Again, the silence proved his point.

"Then wait. She's getting closer to the Lightwoods, which, if Maryse is anything like I remember, will only end up in betrayal. And she only risked leaving because she knew she had family outside of this manor. Once we're the only family she has left, she won't want to leave."

In the pause that followed, Valentine could feel Jonathan warring with himself over needing his sister back, and wanting her to be happy. But he was both human and demon, and both were inclined to be selfish the majority to all of the time. He could tell the moment when Jonathan's resolve hardened, and he became the finely honed weapon he'd been trained to be.

"Fine. I'll wait."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own The Mortal Instruments. They belong to Cassandra Clare.**

 **What did you think? What questions will Clary have to answer? Review!**


	9. To Question Strangers

**To Question Strangers**

 _Chapter song: Deep End by Ruelle_

Idris, 1998

 _Jonathan watched the flutter of emotions - confusion, distaste, wariness - across Clary's face as she struggled to understand what Valentine was struggling to teach her._

 _"But Father. . ." She began, then trailed off into uncertainty. "I don't understand. Why must we keep our identity a secret? What could you possibly have done to anger the Clave so much? Do I really need to lie to everyone I meet in order to survive?"_

 _Jonathan let a faint hint of pride in his little sister illuminate his face. She was catching on to the rules surprisingly quickly for a nine year old, and soon she'd be able to join him in venturing out of this valley, maybe even out of the sacred country of Idris itself._

 _But Valentine's dark-eyed appraising glare was harsh and merciless as he surveyed his only daughter. Jonathan felt his pride in her swell as she stared right back into those black pits unflinchingly. He briefly wondered what she saw when she looked at their father; if she only saw the man he knew she hated, or if she saw the undeniable resemblance between himself and Valentine. Whether she wondered if one day, would her brother be like that? Would she start to hate_ him _because of it_?

 _Jonathan knew he himself_ _did._

 _"Clarissa," Valentine's voice left no space for argument, or defiance of any kind. It was the tone that caused even the fire-hearted, stone-willed Clary to drop her bright eyes, and let them be muddied with the milky sheen of obedience. "I've told you many times, though I am uncertain whether you were old enough to remember._ The Clave is corrupt. _They are too stuck in their old ways to heed my wise warnings of our imminent doom if we continue to side with the demon's spawn."_

 _"Downworlders," Clary finished, and though Valentine would have whipped Jonathan for interrupting him, their father's face seemed less severe after Clary did so. He supposed it was because Valentine was pleased his daughter was well trained enough to list his values like a programmed robot._

 _"Yes. They are a scum on this world, and they. Must. Be. Wiped. Out." He punctuated every word with an expressive hand gesture. "But the Clave, alas, do not see eye to eye with us on this-" both of his children cringed at the word_ us, _"-and they would rather turn their backs on and slaughter their own kind, rather than see sense, and they insist on keeping up alliances with the enemy."_

 _Valentine leaned forward over his desk, and Clary suppressed a shiver, but Jonathan - eyes trained on her with a protective, almost possessive, urge like they always were - caught the slight movement, and gritted his teeth in anger. Clary didn't need to be afraid of their father. She didn't need to be afraid of anyone when he was within earshot. "Which is why, Seraphina," their father continued in a low, menacing voice, "you must stay close to your brother when away from this valley, or they will catch you and_ kill you _for who your parents are. They are prejudiced against our family and mean us only ill."_

 _His voice evened out again as he sat back. "And that is why you are safest here, far away from their talons." He finished with. . . not quite cheer, but a grotesque, twisted, frightening madman's version of it. His eyes gleamed unsettlingly. "Now, your day's training will begin shortly. Go and get changed."_

 _As Clary scampered off, Valentine's eyes tracking her every movement, Jonathan eyed his father with suspicion. He knew by the calculating look on the man's face that he was going to observe Clary very closely for the next few days to see how she reacted to his scare tactics - and be observing Jonathan, to see how he reacted to his beloved little sister's fear._

 _But that wasn't what worried Jonathan._

 _What worried him was that mixed in with the faint fondness in Valentine's eyes, was hatred for his daughter, pure and deadly. The sort of hatred that festered over time, like an infection developing in a wound, as it slowly poisoned the beholder._

 _And as Clary grew, as she began to look more and more painfully like her mother, the poison's potency would grow with her._

* * *

New York, 2007

"I'll go first," Jace butted in sweetly, with that angelic look on his face that she knew so well. Clary eyed him warily, and he met her distrusting expression with a face of stone, but his eyes glimmered with the amusement of the devil, like tiny sparks leaping out of pools of magma. "Why did you hide your runes when we first went into Taki's?"

Clary breathed a barely audible sigh of relief, and had to restrain from cracking a grin. She knew it. She still knew him well enough to predict what he would ask, and prepare herself for it. She didn't like lying - least of all to him - but what else could she do?

She knew that it wasn't the rune power that bothered him; he himself was abnormally fast and strong - they were anomalies. He didn't care about why she could make portals; magic could be learned to a certain unknown extent (though making portals was _way_ beyond the normal initiate's abilities), especially considering she was practically adopted by a _warlock,_ for the Angel's sake.

No. What didn't sit right with him was the fact that someone would want to hide from their own kind. To keep their identity a secret. Like he had for the first ten years of his life, hiding away in the manor.

He wanted to know if she had a thread of character that he could connect to.

She did not give him the satisfaction of being certain about it. "Who says I was hiding them from you?" She replied coolly, and watched Jace's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline at the disbelief that for once, the world didn't revolve around him. She played that arrogance to her advantage. "You can't tell me that there hasn't been a considerable. . . _animosity_ between some Downworlders and certain Shadowhunters, even after sixteen years." She registered the slightly uncomfortable shift in the trio's features as she referenced the Uprising, and inwardly wondered what they knew about their parents' involvement in it. "Perhaps I just wanted to avoid the scathing remarks made by the bolder few."

She paused, then went on to add. "Besides, when three heavily armed teenagers come up to you and start questioning you in aggressive tones, you're not going to lie down and take it, are you?" She defended, and the three nodded in begrudging agreement, perhaps realising they needed to work on their diplomacy skills.

Isabelle's eyes narrowed as she tried to call her bluff, but they relaxed again when she detected no flicker of a lie in Clary's face. Clary, for a brief forgettable moment, thanked her father and he incessant training for her to hide her emotions. Jace only flushed a dark red, and Alec let out a sharp bark of laughter at his _parabatai's_ flush.

It evidently didn't happen often.

"Fine then," Alec said, waving his hand to dissuade Jace, who was no doubt incensed by the laughter, from making a harsh remark. "Perhaps you had a valid reason for hiding your identity. But that doesn't answer _how_ you did it. You can create new runes? And you can make portals?" He paused, then added. "I'm presuming the two unusual gifts are linked."

Clary laughed softly. "I wouldn't know. I've got no idea how or why I can do what I do. I can just do it." She fixed her eyes on Jace. "Much like you and your unnatural athletic abilities, golden boy."

Jace visibly swallowed at the intensity of her gaze, but though Alec and Isabelle looked like they were dying to ask who her informant was, but they refrained from doing so, seemingly sensing that questions in that vein would not be appreciated.

However, Isabelle seemed to be struggling with something else, and not just that. Finally she burst out, "Are you half-warlock?"

Clary stared for a heartbeat. Then two. Then three.

Then she doubled over, laughs racking her body with impunity.

"You - think - I'm - half - warlock?!" She choked out, tears leaking from the corners of her scrunched up eyes and tracking down her cheeks like showers of light rain. "Need I remind you that-"

"Warlocks are sterile crossbreeds, yeah, yeah, I know, I know," Isabelle interrupted, waving her hand dismissively. Irritation drew the sharp lines of her face taut, and a slight embarrassment limned her pursed lips. "I don't need the lecture."

"Come to think of it, I've met a warlock who could have kids," Clary voiced aloud, tapping her chin whilst in thought. She ignored the Lightwoods' shocked and disbelieving faces. "But I digress. To answer your question Isabelle: no, I am not half warlock. I am one-hundred percent Shadowhunter."

Maybe if she said it enough times, it would come true.

"Nevertheless," Jace murmured. He'd been oddly quiet throughout the talk, and Clary noticed as Alec cast an inquiring glance at his _parabatai_ because of it. "There's something off about you. Something familiar." He stepped forward and reached out a hand, the fingers ghosting along her cheekbone.

She stepped back, and his hand fell to his side. "I will repeat what I said before," she said, her voice hardening to that perfect shell, but shells one found on the beach were so easily broken. She prayed they didn't hear the tremble in her words. "I can't imagine why."

Jace didn't seem fazed by her obvious wish to _not_ be close to him. "You're a conundrum, Clarissa. . ." His voice trailed off in a silent inquiry.

"Fray." She replied plainly, locking her gaze with his and willing herself not to get lost in it. "Clarissa Fray."

His brows furrowed infinitesimally, and she found she couldn't drag her gaze from his to observe them. He seemed to be facing a similar dilemma, as his pupils flickered. "Fray isn't a Shadowhunter na-"

"I think I know what my name is, thank you very much," she snapped then, breaking the both of them out of that spell. He looked slightly dazed, and when she dared a glanced at Isabelle and Alec behind him, the former wore a knowing smirk.

Clary lifted her chin, and let herself adopt that commanding imperial air that she reserved for desperately uncomfortable situations. "Now, is that all you wanted to ask?" She cut out slightly impatiently.

Alec nodded. "Yes." She turned to leave at the assurances, hearing the rustling of gear as they did the same.

"Wait!" Came a voice. She raised an eyebrow at Jace as he jogged back to her. He handed her a slip of paper. "My phone number," he explained. "Text me later, so next time we can just call you rather than hassling a cranky warlock trying to get a hold of you."

"Okay." She replied in a monotone voice as she turned and jogged up the last few steps to the door to the apartments. "Bye."

The door slammed behind her, cutting off Jace's farewell.

* * *

A little while later, a strange instinct caused Jace to veer to the left down an alley on the way back, leaving Alec and Izzy behind

"Jace?" Came the confusion. "You alright?"

"Yeah," he called back. "I'll catch up soon. Just give me a second." He was gone before he heard the reply.

He didn't have to walk very far down before he saw a sight that had him dropping his seraph blades, barely paying attention as they clanged to the ground at his feet.

Because right there, standing in front of him, was Michael Wayland.

His father looked older - seven years older, in fact - and more severe. Harsh lines limned his eyes and mouth, and the way he held himself was different; still erect, but not more. . . rigid. Stiff. Unyielding. His already white hair was streaked with a little silver, and his gait was slightly more bowed, as if under a great pressure.

But he was still the man Jace knew.

"Father?" Came the tremulous question, falling from his quivering lips before he could stop it. He didn't dare reach forward to touch him, to see if he was tangible, palpable, solid, _real_. He didn't dare reach for him, not when he'd done it so often in the previous years just for him to be made of light and shadow, as insubstantial as a faerie's beauty.

"Jonathan," came the expressionless, emotionless reply. But there was some sort of ache in those fathomless black eyes, one that Jace couldn't place.

"But- How-"

"Why don't you ask Seraphina?" His father interrupted, knowing his question before he did. Jace closed his eyes, the same heartbreak he'd always felt welling up at the name. _Seraphina. . ._

"But she's-" he opened his eyes, only to find his father gone. It was just a mirage, or a hallucination. Like always. He lowered his eyes to the ground, surprised to feel that tell tale stinging just around his eyes. He hadn't cried in years.

Despite there being no one to listen to it, he finished his pain-ridden sentence. "Dead." He said, and the syllable weighed on his heart like a paper weight, making him struggle for breath.

* * *

 **What do you think happened there at the end? What do you think Clary suspects about why she might have her abilities? What do you think will happen next?**

 **Was this any good? Review?**


	10. To Worry About Her

**To Worry About Her**

 _Chapter song: The Lonely by Christina Perri_

New York, 2004

 _"I don't trust her, Jocelyn," Luke said solemnly. He fiddled with his spectacles as he narrowed his blue eyes in the direction of the door Clary had just disappeared through._

 _Jocelyn sighed. Yes, she understood the potential risks of letting Clary live with her. Yes, she got that Clary had been raised by Valentine and could potentially be just as much of a monster as he was (she shuddered at the thought). And yes, she got that it was probably a royally stupid thing to do to let her daughter in when there was a very high risk of Clary only being here to spy for Valentine._

 _But didn't Luke get that Clary was_ her daughter _? She needed to trust her; needed to trust someone who was actually a part of her messed up family, and to tell herself that she wasn't a pathetic excuse for a mother. She'd raised Clary as a baby, and she still remembered the laughing chubby one year old whose brother doted on her from eleven years ago. She didn't want to think that she'd_ forced _Clary to return to Valentine, simply by turning her daughter away in her most desperate hour._

 _Besides, Clary had convinced_ Magnus _of her innocence. And that man - warlock, whatever - was, whilst eccentric and enthusiastic,_ very _difficult to get around. That had to count for something didn't it?_

 _"Don't you think I know that, Luke?" She responded to her lifelong friend, alarming herself at how much fatigue she could inject into that single sentence. "Don't you think I've been warring with myself over this ever since I laid eyes on her for the first time in years? Don't you think I haven't analysed and re-analysed her story a thousand times to spot any inconsistencies, anything that might hint that she's not telling the truth?" Her voice broke on the last syllable. "Give her a chance, Luke. For me, for the old Valentine who asked you to be his_ parabatai _, give our daughter a chance."_

 _There was a tense silence, and Jocelyn watched the tendons in Luke's throat flex as he opened and closed his mouth, no doubt trying to convince himself to suppress the words of argument bubbling in his mind. She knew he only wanted to protect her, knew he meant well but. . . couldn't he see she_ needed _this?_

 _She needed to be able to love her daughter._

 _A terse nod. She sighed with relief, and went to embrace her oldest friend, shutting her eyes as she let herself be enveloped in his familiar warmth. "Fine, Jocelyn." Came his gruff voice. "For you."_

 _Some instinct a few moments later - perhaps installed by her dedicated years of Shadowhunting - made her open her eyes then and look up, propping her chin on Luke's shoulder. Clary stood in the doorway, her oversized clothes tied and cut where necessary to make them fit better, and her stele rested comfortably in her hand. The first thing Jocelyn noticed about her daughter was that she had the hands and fingers of an artist._

 _The second was that she looked upon Jocelyn and Luke's embrace with a heart-breaking blend of pain, longing,_ _and nostalgia._

 _And Jocelyn had to wonder whether the horrific reasons Clary had recounted were the only reasons she'd left, and whether someone else was involved with it._

 _Luke gave a little start as he turned, arm still around Jocelyn's shoulders, and spotted the preteen lingering there. He opened his mouth to speak, no doubt assuming she'd heard their conversation, but she cut him off with a sad smile. "It's okay," she said softly. "I understand. I wouldn't trust me in your situation either." She paused for breath. "I get that I'll have to earn your trust, and prove I am who I say I am. And I will, I promise."_

 _And for the next three years, she did._

* * *

New York, 2007

Jocelyn was sick and tired of her daughter's habit of getting up before dawn and leaving the vaguest of vague notes to explain where she was going. She understood that Clary struggled to sleep in any later than half past five but. . . if she leaves the house, she can at least make sure to be back by three in the afternoon!

"Calm down, Jocelyn," Luke said casually from where he stood in the kitchen making pancakes. "Clary will be fine. She can take care of herself."

"Don't you think I know that!?" She snapped in reply, pausing just long enough in her pacing to shoot a glare Luke's way. He didn't seem fazed, and Jocelyn was struck by a sense of sudden déjà vu as she used the same words she had so long ago. "Excuse me for being worried about my daughter's wellbeing when just this morning I woke to a banging on the door that was Dorothea telling me in person that Valentine had been sighted by a werewolf not to far from here, only to find that Clary's disappeared to Angel knows where leaving a note that simply says ' _gone to Simon's_ ' and yet when I phone Elaine she says they're not there!"

She took a breath, and only then did she process Luke's expression of slight betrayal, and of prevailing concern. "What?" She demanded.

"Valentine's in New York?" He asked worriedly, turning away from his pancakes altogether. "And you didn't tell me?"

"I'm a bit too busy panicking to think straight right now, Luke!" She half shrieked, throwing her hands up. Luke was about to argue when the door swung open to reveal Clary tucking a key back into her pocket. Jocelyn yelled "Hallelujah!" and ran towards her, hugging her tightly before she'd even fully stepped into the residence,

Clary looked slightly perturbed. "What did I miss? 'Cause I've had a very eventful day and I'm in a funny mood. I bet I've been through more stuff than I missed."

"You. Idiot." Jocelyn said firmly, detaching herself and holding Clary at arms length, inspecting her meticulously from head to toe. "What were you thinking, running off at the godforsaken hours of the morning!? All you said was 'I'm going to Simon's' and yet when I _called_ Simon's mum she said you weren't there! And then you're out for a solid nine and a half hours and I don't know whether or not you've _died_ and Valentine was spotted near here by one of Dorothea's clients, and-"

"Fath- Valentine was spotted near here?" Clary interrupted. Jocelyn chose to focus on the way all the colour drained from her complexion leaving her freckles dark in contrast like ink blots on a fresh page, rather than cringing at Clary's little slip up when talking about the man who'd sired her. "You couldn't have opened with that!?"

Clary was pacing now, running her hands through her hand and grunting in annoyance when they got stuck halfway. "I'm going to take a shower," she announced. "And then I'm going to come out here and freak out and pace and bombard you two with questions about this. Possible irritate Dorothea as well. See you!" She dashed into the bathroom.

Sometimes the reckless speed with which Clary charged into certain situations left Jocelyn breathless.

* * *

"I'm just saying what I was told," Dorothea said earnestly. The old woman was clearly annoyed at Clary's persistent question and Jocelyn winced as their neighbour gave her a pointed look that clearly conveyed _control your daughter_.

Was that possible?

"Look, Clarissa," Dorothea finished, and Jocelyn could practically _see_ her daughter bristle at the use of her full name. Jocelyn hastily went to pull her away.

"Thank you for your time!" She called behind her, as she dragged a still fuming Clary up the stairs. Her daughter, thankfully, didn't try to resist and let herself be flung inside the apartment. "Are you mad, Clary? You know Dorothea hates being interrogated."

"I know," the girl replied, seeming resigned. Jocelyn tilted her head. "And I'm sorry. I guess I'm just-" she swallowed, "-scared. Of him. Of _him._ Of. . . everything."

"I know what you mean," she replied honestly, mind drifting back to her own horrifying experiences.

Clary gave her a queer look. "Do you?"

Before Jocelyn could answer, Clary's phone went off. Jocelyn watched as her daughter squinted at the screen, then observed with bemusement as a multitude of emotions crossed the redhead's face: delight, irritation, endearment. . . before she was feverishly tapping the keys, turning away from her mother and heading for her room in an effective dismissal - one worthy of Valentine's daughter.

* * *

The text on the screen glowed as she typed her reply.

 _I realised I barely know anything about you. How about we go for a demon hunt tomorrow evening? Meet me at the Institute at seven - J_

She didn't need to think to know who _J_ was.

She swiftly formulated a response. _Confident, aren't we? - C_

 _You're not saying no ;) - J_

 _I'll see you there - C_

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

 **I'm _really_ sorry about how short this was. It's just a filler, and I just needed to get it out of the way before continuing with the plot. And I also apologise if it got a little... choppy, at the end. It's late and I'm tired but I really wanted to post this today. I promise the next one will be longer, with more action in it.**

 **What did you think? What do you think will happen on the hunt? Where do you think the plot will progress from there?**

 **Review?**


	11. To Hunt For Enemies

**To Hunt For Enemies**

 _Chapter song: Monsters by Ruelle_

Idris, 1998

 _The first time Jace saw Seraphina in full Shadowhunter battle regalia, he choked on his own saliva._

 _Seraphina was, to all appearances, for lack of a better description, a little girl. She was young, she looked young, and despite the fact that she certainly didn't act young, this was her defining trait. She was a child, just as much as Jace. Children should not look threatening._

 _Then again, he knew that he himself looked threatening. So why should she look any different?_

 _But even if he'd been expecting her to look. . . somewhat imposing, even then he wouldn't have been prepared for the reality of her._

 _Her ginger hair was brutally tied back in two plaits, so tight he imagined it would make any other seven year old squirm with discomfort, in a way that made her eyes bug out of her head. But it didn't look as pathetic as one would expect; quite the opposite actually. Her wiry limbs were clad in the black leather all Shadowhunters wore, and any exposed skin was more ink than it's original colour; the amount of runes she bore even outnumbered her freckles with ease. Round her chest and her waist were two leather straps, each one with a different type of dagger or weapon tucked in. Tight but comfortable boots encased her feet and when she narrowed her eyes at him, he found himself trembling._

 _So, suffice to say, yes, she did look very threatening._

 _"Coming, Jacey?" Seraphina taunted, but there was no malice behind it. Jace was never sure why - though he would never question it; he was very grateful for that fact - but she'd taken a liking to him even after the rockiness of their first meeting. They just had the same sense of dry humour, and the same attitudes towards things._

 _So he wasn't surprised to find he was comfortable enough to smirk back cockily and quip,_ "I've _been waiting for_ you, _Sera. You're the fussy one who insisted on not having a single hair out of place when you go out hunting."_

 _She narrowed her eyes further as he chuckled, before her face cleared, like sunshine had wiped away all the clouds. The abruptness of it unnerved him. "Fine, Jacey," she replied airily. "Laugh all you want. But it'll be my turn when a demon grabs your head by your abnormally long hair and pulls a chunk of it out, then using it in some sort of spell to give you an extra set of arms."_

 _Her certainty was slightly nerve wracking, but he assumed an unaffected air. "An extra pair of arms may be quite handy in a fight actually," he said, then snickered at his own pun._

 _She smiled darkly, waving her arm. His attention was drawn to a scar that ran from the base of her thumb to wrap round her arm to her elbow, and he wondered where she'd gotten it. "Not when their growing out of your. . ." She paused, then her smile turned to a full blown wicked grin. "Neck."_

 _He blanched. "Yikes."_

 _She laughed, then her hand went to the sheath at her hip and listened to the squeal as she pulled out a sword that was so beautiful he couldn't help glancing at it. The metal was a dark silver, stamped with stars. He mentally compared it to the ring he wore, and wondered why she bore a sword with his family crest on it._

 _She smirked at him, noticing the subject of his attention. "Yikes is right, Jace H- Wayland."_

 _He never noticed the hesitation at the time, and didn't for a good few years._

* * *

New York, 2007

Clary tucked the simple sword into the scabbard at her hip and slashed a glamour rune onto her wrist. She bounced up and down on her heels, looking around the busy street as she waited for the Lightwoods to show up. She studied the long queue to get into Pandemonium, and sighed with relief at the knowledge that not only did she know the werewolf bouncer as a lycanthrope from Luke's pack, but that her runes would also grant her a free pass in.

"You showed," lilted an amused voice. She huffed, and turned to face the owner.

"Obviously," she drawled. She turned to meet the playful stare of Jace, and the irritated stares of Alec and Isabelle.

"I'm pretty sure Jace told you to meet us at the Institute," Isabelle snapped, folding her arms over her chest. This simple action drew Clary's attention to the gear Isabelle wore, or lack thereof. Instead of gear, the taller girl had donned a long flowing dress the colour of snow, that gleamed painfully under the fluorescent bulbs in the streetlights. She cringed at the colour, but even so, Clary couldn't help but notice how out of date the style was, or the way it covered every inch of her skin - of her runes. "Can you not follow simple instructions?"

Clary looked up coolly. "I can. I just choose not to most of the time." A pause, then she spat out her scepticism: "You're wearing _white_ to seduce the demon? Don't you think that's a bit. . . sacrilegious? Risky?"

Isabelle smirked in response, and Clary felt respect for this young woman flutter in her heart. "Don't _you_ think you're being a bit superstitious?" Clary had to give her that one. "Besides, if it's white, the demon will be less inclined to think it's a Shadowhunter, for the very reason you just said. It'll be easier to fool it."

Clary nodded to show she conceded the point. "That's actually kind of smart."

"Glad to know you approve of our precautions," her brother butted in then, dryly. "Either way, let's get in there before the Eidolon makes one of these mundanes a snack or something."

Jace nodded, though he hadn't moved his aureate eyes from the two girls, where they'd been flicking back and forth like he was watching a mundane tennis match. "I agree. Let's go." He gave her a crooked half smile that for some reason had her heart skipping in her chest. "That is, if you girls have stopped bickering."

Isabelle flicked her hair over her shoulder, a lock of it hitting Jace in the nose and making him sneeze. Clary brought up a hand to stifle a giggle, and found she couldn't summon alarm when Jace's eyes momentarily flicked over the scar on her wrist she'd had since an unfortunate incident in training when she was six. "Never," Isabelle vowed, and looped her arm through Clary's, before they sashayed towards the queue in unison.

And Clary could have sworn that even Alec snorted with barely suppressed laughter at that.

* * *

Once they were in, Clary forced herself to ignore the constant urge to join the swathes of people in the middle of the dance floor, moving along to the music like one giant rippling limb. She'd only ever been to Pandemonium twice since she'd come to New York - once with Simon in an attempt to get him to loosen up a bit, once with Maia - but then she'd been warned that the New York Shadowhunters frequented this place just as much as they did Taki's, and she'd been sure to stay away. She hadn't been here in over a year.

But nothing had changed.

The atmosphere was still electric, lighting gunpowder in Clary's veins and sending her nerves tingling and muscles contracting in an effort to get her to dance, like the effects of what happened when one consumed faerie juice. She felt her heart tune to the beat in the music oozing from the speakers over head; heard her pulse pounding out the same beat in her ears. Isabelle parting from their group to walk out on her own. A lone white star amongst the sea of figures.

They passed a number of Downworld denizens as they tracker deeper, to the back of the club where shadowy alcoves lined the walls. Of course there were Downworlders, Clary chided herself mentally; this place was a collision of the mundane and Shadow worlds, where everything fused together in smoke an fluorescence. Much like Clary herself.

Perhaps that was why she liked it here.

"He's seen her," Jace muttered suddenly, jerking his head towards where Isabelle danced where she stood, radiant, and then at a blue-haired boy Clary had seen trying to convince the bouncer to let him in outside. She'd thought there was something suspicious about how green his eyes were: they were so bright, the colour of antifreeze. "And she's got him," Jace continued as Isabelle gracefully nodded her head in the direction of a door that said _staff only_ on the front. "Let's go."

Clary knew he was saying the words for her benefit, because one glance from him and his _parabatai_ had mobilised as well, ready to head it. She pulled out her own blade, practice ensuring it didn't make a sound, and quietly stalked after the boy as Jace took the lead. Alec circled behind them, bow drawn and arrow notched. She supposed they'd always hunted in this formation, with the reckless one on the offence and the cautious on the defence.

It was effective, she had to admit.

Isabelle smiled seductively at the demon, which, unconsciously, licked its lips, accidentally revealing the silver flash of needle like teeth as it did so. Its eerie eyes were fixed on Isabelle's face - or, more accurately, the thrumming pulse at the juncture between her head and neck. It stepped forward, oblivious to the set of silvery gold bangles round its prey's wrist starting to elongate into an electrum whip, or the three teenagers who slipped in the room after him.

Clary resisted the urge to grin as Isabelle's eyes met hers over the demon's shoulder, a barely detectable flicker of the dark irises, but enough to amuse the girls enough for Isabelle to lift her brow a fraction, so her face displayed a sardonic curiosity.

The demon cocked its head, interested in her change of emotion, the change in her heartbeat he surely picked up on as she allowed the adrenaline to race through her veins. "I haven't seen you here before," it commented, its voice nothing more than a low hiss that even a mundane would have trouble mistaking for human. "What's your name?"

Isabelle let some of her amusement seep into her giggle as she brought her hand to her mouth, and raised her brow to a height where the inquiry was noticeable. "You're asking if I come here often?" She twirled a lock of her hair round her finger and Clary took note of how it further loosened the whip coiled round her wrist. "I'm Isabelle."

"That's a pretty name," it growled, and then Isabelle brought her hand to her mouth, flicked her thumb over the grip of her whip, and allowed the sleeve of her dress to fall down slightly, exposing the night-vision rune etched onto her skin.

The demon froze. "You-"

A flash of gold, too fast for the human eye to process, but not fast enough for a demon or Shadowhunter to miss, smacked the demon in the chest in a blow that would have felled any mortal.

But the demon only staggered back, disoriented, as black blood poured in a sheet down his chest, the ichor dissolving the plastic casings of the wires around his feet, causing sparks to jump across the floor. Another snap and Isabelle's whip had wrapped round his torso like wire round a tree, and she was stepping forward and tugging on the bindings, making sure they were secure as she shoved him against the pillar. The demon snarled and snapped at her, but missed.

Isabelle stepped back and surveyed him, the way a cook might proudly survey a meal they'd painstakingly prepared. Her smile glittered like light shining off bubbling poison. She still wore her smile, but it had blossomed, similar to a blown bubble. "He's all yours, boys," she sang, then added, "and girl."

Apparently, Jace didn't need any further prompting, as he barrelled forwards, planting himself before the bound demon like a lion in front of a cornered deer. He grinned at him, and for a moment his tawny eyes turned to flame.

"So. . ." He drawled, like being there was an inconvenience, even though Clary could see the thrilling spark in his eye, and the curve of his smile. "Are there any more of you?"

The demon struggled against its bonds, wrists slippery with blood, but it maintained the gall to feint ignorance. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Its reticence didn't seem to throw Jace. If anything, it only fanned the glowing embers into flame. He lifted his hands and the demon's eyes skipped over the skin there: more ink than not. "Come now," Jace chided, and a piece of his wicked grin was in his voice, like a chip of salt dissolved in water. "You know what we are."

The demon clenched its jaw, then its eyes travelled over Jace, to Isabelle, standing with her hand on the tail end of the whip, to Alec, standing stoically behind his siblings, to Clary. Something sparked in its gaze when it laid eyes on Clary, but when it turned back to Jace, its expression of what would have been hope on any human dulled into a sneer. "Shadowhunters," it spat.

It was Isabelle who replied, her face resembling the Cheshire Cat's. "Got you."

The demons face could have terrified a mundane to death.

Jace stepped forward again. "You still haven't told me if there are any more of you." His fingers caressed the hilt of the blade.

Clary's breath hitched when she saw the blade he used. It was a _kindjal,_ with a red stone set in the handle and a star stamped onto the blade.

A Morgenstern blade.

The demons eyes surveyed the company again, seemingly assessing who would most likely give it mercy. It was met with ruthless, blank stares, but nevertheless its eyes lit up when they flicked to its left - to Clary. "Spare me!" It choked. "I can give you information! I know where Valentine is!"

A chill snaked its way down her back, accompanied by the lingering echoes of what Dorothea had said. _Valentine is in New York. . ._

Her comrades, it seemed, had no such qualms with the information. Alec gave a grunt of annoyance, and Jace scoffed.

"By the Angel, every time we capture one of your kind you claim to know where Valentine is. Well, guess what?" He leaned closer to the demon; spittle flew out and hit its face. It closed its eyes. "We know where he is too. _In Hell._ " He raised his _kindjal_ , and Clary took a moment to appreciate the undeniable irony of it all: the adopted son of Valentine Morgenstern insisting the man was dead, going to kill the one who dare claimed he wasn't with an heirloom of the hated family. " _And you can join him there._ "

"Stop!" The demon cried weakly. Its eyes flicked to, and locked with, Clary's. "Surely you of all people would want to know where-" Clary had drawn her sword and sliced its head off before it could finish the sentence.

Black blood burned her hand and she wiped her blade on her gear, feigning indifference in an attempt to hide how shaken she was at how close the demon had come to revealing who she was.

"Good riddance," Isabelle broke the silence. "It doesn't do, listening to them. They'll drive you insane. Tell you your greatest fears are reality, just to get to you."

Clary nodded mutely in response. Jace was scrutinising her a little too much for her liking.

It probably wasn't safe to say what she was about to say. But she had to know. "What it said. . ." She trailed off. "What _you_ said. What do you mean every time you catch one it claims to know where Valentine is? He's dead."

"Yes he is, Clarissa," Jace filled in sarcastically. "Do you not know who he is?"

"Oh no, I just happen not to have heard of the most notorious Shadowhunter who nearly destroyed the Accords." She drawled in response. "I was just wondering how long has this been going on for."

Surprisingly, it was Alec who filled in his commentary, then. Jace was still examining her intently. The archer shrugged. "About a month? I can't be sure. But around that."

Clary nodded warily. "So if that's how long he's been "back"-" She used air quotes to show her scepticism, "then why hasn't he acted sooner? Why would there be only rumours?"

"Because he's not back?" Jace suggested dryly. "But as long as we're playing the _what if_ game, then I suppose it makes sense he's waiting. He waited to attack the Clave, didn't he?" She nodded, acutely aware of Alec and Isabelle's thoughtful gazes. "Maybe he needed something to proceed with his plans then. Maybe he needs to same thing now. That might be why he's waiting." Jace thought for a minute, then laughed. "I can't believe I'm even considering this. He's in the ground. He's gone. End of story."

Clary shrugged in response, though her mind was racing, even as they turned to leave the club, even as she waved goodbye to the Lightwoods and went to make a Portal, even when she arrived home and went to bed, unable to sleep.

Because Jace's words had rung a bell in her. She knew how obsessed Valentine was with a certain object. She knew how many pains he'd put himself through to obtain it before. She knew that she and Jocelyn were perhaps the only two who knew where that object was.

Because she knew that if it came down to it, if she stood between him and the Mortal Cup, she knew her father would not hesitate to run her through.

It was inevitable.

Clary only hoped she had the chance to spare her loved ones before the time came.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. I am not Cassandra Clare.**

 **Sorry for the lull in updating, I don't have any excuse so... here it is.**

 **In fact, in this chapter there's a key point that's absolutely vital to Jace finding out who Clary is. I'm wondering if anyone spotted it...**

 **What did you think? Review?**


	12. To Take What You Want

**To Take What You Want**

 _Chapter song: Fire by Jena Gogo (The Next Step Songs)_

Idris, 2004

 _Jonathan cast a wary glance at his sister as she ran ahead of him through trees. They'd been playing a friendly game of hide and seek, Clary being the one to hide, as always, but she hadn't been fully present as they did so, and Jonathan had caught up to her with an insulting ease. He'd tickled her, but she barely laughed, looking over her shoulder with a deep set frown at odds with her soft features._

 _It made him uneasy._

 _"What's wrong, Clare?" He asked, when he couldn't take it anymore. She turned towards him with a confusion scowl dragging her eyebrows together, and he swallowed at the sight. "You seem a little. . . distracted today. Are you okay?"_

 _She nodded, slowly, then with more vigour. "Yeah!" She said enthusiastically, though her gaze was still distant. She wriggled and he looked down to see he was still holding her flush against him. He swallowed again and let go, a little reluctantly. "It's just. . . " She trailed off. "I saw a door back there - you know, by that stretch of ruined wall? It was never there before."_

 _His heart thudded against his chest. This was not something they should look into; Clary could get hurt. They mustn't they mustn't they-_

 _"Let's have a look!" She decided resolutely, throwing herself off the ground and scurrying off._ No. _He sighed, then scrambled to his feet and went to follow her, unable to deny that something awakened in his gut, opening a large slumbering eye._

 _He didn't like it. Anything his demon deemed important enough to surface for, was something he wanted far away from his little sister._

 _But he didn't have much of a choice but to follow her and to carry the added weight of dread as they neared the stretch of wall that Clary had gestured to. She got there first, and stood about a foot from the wall, eyeing it like she too felt the essence of death and destruction that emanated from it, the essence his demon was basking in, revelling in the fear. But. . ._

 _It was just a wall. No door, no gate, nothing._

 _"What are you talking about, Clary?" He asked, and he tried to make it come out exasperated and irritable, but his voice betrayed him and his voice was wary, only a little exasperated, and it was almost_ frightened. _No! He was not frightened. "There's nothing there."_

 _She frowned again, looking back at him like he was stupid. He stood there awkwardly, a little unnerved by how much she looked like their father when she made that expression. "Can't you see it?" She mused, running a hand down the wall. Her pale hand seemed to leave a rip in the wall and the image coalesced into- "A glamour, maybe?"_

 _Jonathan blinked. The darkness that he'd spied in the trail Clary's hand made had warped into a door, old and rotting, set deep into the stone. A single iron handle and key were set in it. "I see it now," he said hoarsely, then stepped up next to her. He shuddered as his demon writhed in glee._

 _He didn't want to go in there. If he was happy being in there, then he didn't want to go in there. "Let's not go in," he decided._

 _Clary scoffed. "Are you serious? No way I'm backing out now." At her brother's silence, she continued, more vehemently. "Come on, Jonathan. A door neither of us have seen before, hidden by a strong glamour? Don't tell me you don't want to find out what's inside."_

 _He hesitated._ No I don't want to know, thank you very much, _echoed in his thoughts. He hated that his father had impressed such obedience into him, such unquestioning loyalty. He loathed it actually. He wished he could be a carefree as Clary, without having to worry about being whipped._

 _Clearly he hesitated for too long, because she huffed, and tugged out her stele. "Fine, if you want to be a killjoy, go do it somewhere else. But I'm going in there."_

 _She'd slashed the Open rune into the door and ducked through before he could grab her. He growled, low in his throat, and resolved himself to following her._

 _He wrinkled his nose physically at the stench of blood and gore as he stepped into the passage, but in reality he couldn't stop himself from taking a deep breath of it, letting it sate his demon. He hated himself for doing it, especially as a glance at Clary revealed the tenseness of her posture, and tightening of the skin of her nose, minute changes that betrayed her discomfort in the situation._

 _But she kept going, and Jonathan, damning them both to hell, followed after her. He knew something was wrong the moment the corridor snaked sideways - under the house - and he felt a crunching under his feet that Clary openly cringed at. Bones._

 _And sure enough, something was wrong._

 _They passed into a room lined with cells. And one glance at them had Clary falling to her knees and throwing up. Jonathan was so disgusted by his demon's pleasure that his stomach roiled himself._

 _The cells were filled with Downworlders. In one cell a vampire had his left hand in holy water, and through the glass walls of the tub Jonathan could see the skin peeling off his bones. In the next one over a young faerie child had multiple piercings - through his ear, through his nose, through the skin between his thumb and forefinger. Judging by the red, irritated skin around them, they were made of iron. A young werewolf - not much older than Clary - with olive skin had a band of silver encasing his calf, and he clawed at it, glaring at them and growling._

 _Jonathan growled right back, and went to immediately stand between Clary and him._

 _She barely noticed, still dry heaving on the ground, but when she looked up, they shared a glance, and he knew she understood what was going on. "Why would father do this?" She asked, then went back to retching._

 _He led her out of there, but had a ghostly feeling that she couldn't just forget about it. And sure enough, the next morning their father was raging down the halls and pushing them harder than ever in training, and when Jonathan slipped down there to have another look, the cell doors were unlocked, swinging in the non-existent wind._

* * *

New York, 2007

"Fancy seeing you here," came a voice.

Clary looked up. She'd been sitting in Central Park sketching idly as an. . . almost an escape from the mess of thoughts that rattled around inside her skull. Of course, she was still armed, with numerous knives surreptitiously tucked into her boots and various folds of clothing, but she was in ragged jeans and a faded yellow t-shirt, that was too baggy on her and one end slipped off her shoulder. She was no less a warrior than when she stood in full battle regalia, but she felt more. . . normal, would be the word. It was similar to the feeling Simon had given her when he first befriended her, when his mother had started buying Jocelyn's paintings.

What she saw, however, was not one that would fit into any mundane's mind. Jace Wayland stood in all his glory, the black of his gear and his runes stark against his gold skin, like tiger stripes. He went to sit next to her on the bench, and she just kept surveying him, face blank. Otherwise, the minute widening of her eyes and the catch of her breath might have alerted him to his racing heart.

"Well," she said calmly, but the haste with which she shut her sketchbook and went to shove it back in her bag was anything but calm. He quirked an eyebrow, and she instantly hated him for being able to do so. "It's not like it was planned," she pressed on. "Unless you're insinuating it was?"

He grinned, and that spark of mischief that had had her so enamoured with him when they were children glinted, like an unsheathed sword. "I would never," he declared, pressing a hand to his heart. "I know you would never stoop to such levels to stalk me. You wouldn't need to, smart girl such as yourself."

She tilted her head; her plait flopped over her shoulder to hit the back of the bench. "For one thing, I wouldn't stalk you in a million years. That's your job, considering _you're_ the one who asked me to come on the hunt with you. And on another note," she tilted her head again, and had the satisfaction of feeling her plait thud back between her shoulder blades. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Depends," his grin widened, her heart beating a little faster as it did. "Is it working?"

 _Yes._ "No." She said flatly. He titled back his head and guffawed, clutching at the arm of the seat to steady himself.

"Well then," he continued. "How about I'm a bit more open about it?" He stood up, and turned to face her. This alone caught other pedestrians' attention in the park, but Clary felt her cheeks try to imitate a ruby as he got down on one knee and proclaimed, very loudly and pompously, reaching for her right hand. "My dear Clarissa. . . whatever your name is-"

"Fray," she filled in, with both indignation and amusement limning her voice.

He waved it off. "Would you do me the _honour_ ," he stressed the word, and she laughed, and she saw the corner of his lip curl up at the sound, "of attending a faerie revelry I was invited to with me?"

As entertaining as that sounded - and how much she'd always longed to see the beauties of the Seelie Court herself, when the waitress at Taki's had taken time off work to describe them to her - she swallowed, then slowly shook her head. It hurt - it hurt _so much_ more than she expected to watch Jace's cheerful face fall at the gesture, but she kept shaking her head. Faeries were manipulative and cunning. If word got back to her father about where she was. . .

She internally cringed at the thought of what would happen.

She laughed lightly though, to hide her pain, and she watched as Jace wiped away his own with an expertise she remembered well. "Why would you want someone to go with you to one of those festivities? I'm pretty sure that if a faerie invited you, they expect you to go as their date."

He winced, and retook his seat on the bench next to her. "Yeah. . . About that. The reason I asked is because my ex-girlfriend - a faerie - asked me, and I really want to see one of these legendary events but I'm afraid she'll get the wrong impression if I say yes. So I figured if I took someone as my date, she would get the hint."

"Why me, though?" She couldn't help but ask, and regretted the words the moment they passed her lips.

He cocked his head, and his blonde hair fell in his eyes. "I like you. I'm not just saying that; I genuinely like you. It would be a pleasure to go with you. But then if you don't want to then. . ." He shrugged. "Then fair enough. I just wanted to tell you I'm interested."

Clary was struck speechless. "Oh." Then "Who was your ex-girlfriend?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, apparently indifferent to the question, but Clary saw the flash of gratitude in his aureate eyes at the change of subject. "A fey named Kaelie Whitewillow."

Her copper eyebrows climbed into the hair. "The waitress at Taki's?" She asked for confirmation. Jace nodded his confirmation. "She's my friend. I'll go with you so long as she's comfortable with it - the only reason I said no was that I did _not_ want to come and get glared at by some ethereal-looking faerie who could probably curse me if she really wanted to. So long as Kaelie gets it's just friendly."

He smiled then, albeit a little wistfully, and nodded. "Done."

Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

The breath left Clary all at once, but before she could back away or reciprocate it, it was over; Jace had pulled back almost as fast as he'd lunged forward. He smiled hesitantly at her, and, after a moment, she smiled back.

"Why did you do that?" She asked shyly, blushing.

One side of his mouth tugged upwards.

"Because I wanted to," he said earnestly.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

 **Okay, first I'm going to apologise profusely for the lack of updates. I know; I'm awful. I'll try to catch up.**

 **On another note: OH MY GOSH. 13 REVIEWS ON ONE CHAPTER. I'm thrilled. Thank you all so much.**

 **So yeah, I know this chapter was sort of a filler, but the plot should become a bit more exciting once this "date" at the Seelie Court comes to pass.**

 **Review?**


	13. To Make A Friend

**To Make A Friend**

 _Chapter song: My Version of You by Beth Crowley_

Idris, 2004

 _They were on a routine demon patrol when Jonathan brought up the conversation he'd been skirting around for so long. "Why did you free those Downworlders?"_

 _She raised her eyebrows, and snorted. "Wow, Jonathan, took you all of six weeks to work up the courage to ask that question."_

 _He just scoffed in return, though a very, very small part of admitted that he had been afraid to ask. "It took me all of these six weeks to get you alone to ask you about it - to make sure that Father didn't overhear us when I questioned you about it. Excuse me for not particularly desiring for you to be taken under." He could have arranged such circumstances in far less time._

 _He immediately regretted his choice of words. He'd meant, of course, their father taking her under his wing - and taking her down into the cellar to become acquainted with his various forms of punishment. But he was fairly sure she heard something different._

 _His suspicions were confirmed with her next words. "He's not going to kill me, Jonathan. Then he'll lose one of his perfectly trained attacked dogs." She said the last part with bitterness, but he was struck by how close she'd hit to the truth - even without her knowing about the reasons behind either of their remarkable talents._

 _So he just shook his head, as though in vain hope that the action might help him to deny how close Clary's words amounted to outright defiance._

 _"You don't have to do that," she said, completely out of the blue. He started, and cast a hasty sidelong look at her, only to find that her green eyes - like two chips of ice - were already meeting his own coal ones. Assessing, calculating. All-seeing._

 _He squirmed under her gaze. But he couldn't help but wonder what she saw._

 _She continued, "You don't have to pretend you're not uncomfortable with what I'm saying. It pointless anyway; I can tell you don't like it when I speak ill of our perfect, strict, strong Father." The last few words were weighted with something heavier than sarcasm, heavier than bitterness. And he couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't the first time she'd had thoughts like this. "So don't act like you do. It's insulting."_

 _"Clary-" he began, but she waved him off._

 _"I get it if you're afraid of what he'll do to you if I betray him." The words were said seriously, but with an ease that told him she was telling the truth. And that was what bothered him. The ease with which she said_ "I" _and the ease with which she said_ "you" _. And he knew, that she had thought of this before._

 _She hadn't believed him capable of mustering the will to defy Valentine. But she'd always known that she would defy him one day. And didn't believe he would follow her._

 _Did she really think so little of him, that she thought he would choose Valentine - the man he hated; the man who_ whipped _him - over her?_

 _The thought caused his breath to snag in his chest, and he opened his mouth to argue, to speak, to do_ anything _that might fix her opinion of him. But she was already moving, listening intently._

 _And as he listened, he heard it too: the rustling of delicate feet on the dry, fallen leaves. How had he been so preoccupied with his anguish that Clary had heard them first?_

 _Then she was moving, slow, steady, wraith-like - just as their father had taught her. Her breathing stilled to a silent whisper; she crouched low to the ground as her tread became light; she rested her hands on the seraph blades at her waist in a gesture he knew was more reassurance than readiness. He followed after her, mimicking her actions. They both listened to the murmuring of voices, light and airy in a way no human voices were. The crackling of a fire that produced no smoke reached them from where they were sheltered in the brush._

 _Clary peered through the leaves of the bush and gasped. She waved a hand, desperately gesturing for him to back down, but he was already moving._

 _The battle calm descended, and he was suddenly immune to the otherwise compelling sound of Clary's screams of protest behind him, or her hands, so useless against his iron corded arms, grabbing at his biceps begging him to_ stop. _He elbowed her thoughtlessly, and the grip fell away._

 _He had palmed two wicked hunting knives before the faerie couple had time to turn around. The male, an eerily beautiful man with bronze skin that had a faint green tinge, and unnaturally blue eyes, had his throat slit before he could gasp, but the female was backing away with her kind's otherworldly swiftness. Behind her legs, shielded by her violet gossamer wings, huddled a small chubby girl, with tight blonde ringlets and wings identical to her mothers. Goblins swarmed round his feet and he kicked one disdainfully, sending them toppling over in a domino effect. Then he bent back his wrist and let the knife in hand fly._

 _It rotated in his hand, specks of blood from where he'd slashed the male's throat flying off like spittle. It found its mark in the faerie's stomach, and she collapsed with a grunt. The sound of a delicate faerie child's bones breaking was music to his ears as the woman fell onto her daughter and bled onto her, unmoving. The blue-eyed hellion was just beginning to cry when he carved a fatal wound in her chest through her mother's legs._

 _Then silence, and as the battle song faded, he began to hear Clary's distressed, shuddering gasps. He turned._

 _Only to find a hatred brighter than the stars gleaming in her eyes as she glared at him. "You - knew." She panted. Her voice was hoarse and scraped raw - possibly from the screaming. "You - knew - we - were - hunting - faeries - and - not - demons - and - you - didn't - tell - me?!"_

 _His silence was answer enough._

 _Her words began to regain their coherency. "You knew we weren't hunting demons, and yet you let me believe that, so you could drag me to watch as you carved apart a few innocent faeries. You. Lied. To. Me."_

 _His chest was heaving. "Clary- I didn't-"_

 _She didn't meet his eyes as she said, "Let's head back to the manor."_

 _He didn't miss the fact that she didn't refer to it as "home"._

* * *

New York, 2007

A pounding at the door roused Clary from her much too light rest. She groaned, and rolled back over to bury her face in her pillow. She heard the neat clicking steps of her mother's feet echo across the apartment floor, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Maybe she could get some more sleep.

It wasn't like her to sleep this late. But after Jace had kissed her in the park, and she'd agreed - very, very, _very_ foolishly, in hindsight - to go to that faerie revelry with him, she come home and fretted. And fretted. And then fretted some more, late into the hours of the night. Now she was exhausted.

What if Valentine and Jonathan - who were undoubtedly in the city - dropped by the Seelie Court whilst she was there? As much as Valentine despised Downworlders, he knew what a threat the faeries, who were perhaps the only people better at evasive answers and half-truths than he was, would pose should they choose to ally with the Clave. And he would try to ally with them first. No doubt sending in Jonathan, with all his training to be charming and perfect, to do his dirty work.

And what better place to do it than at one of their famous revelries? It would certainly be a sign of goodwill to show up and not murder any guests.

She groaned into her pillow again. Why did her life have to be so complicated? Why couldn't she have been born a mundane, with little to no problems to deal with at all?

She was distantly aware of her door banging open and someone shrieking her name. She rolled over to moan at Jocelyn. . .

But it wasn't Jocelyn's voice that roused her from her panicked slumber. It wasn't Jocelyn's hands that grabbed at her shoulders, shaking her and shaking her until her head rolled and she cracked an eye open blearily to tell them to _go away_. . .

And got a shock.

It was Isabelle Lightwood standing in her bedroom, the room with the seamless collision of the Lightwoods' world and the mundane one. It was Isabelle Lightwood whose hands, calloused where they held the whip, were now hitting her in the shoulder. It was Isabelle Lightwood whose shrill voice shrieked at her to _get up_ because apparently something urgent was going on.

Clary jumped up and was out of there like she'd been electrocuted. She almost imagined herself as a cat, with all her undoubtably frizzy fur standing up on end.

"What do you want?" She asked tiredly, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her hand. She glanced at the clock and started: ten o'clock. Had she really slept for that long?

She felt Isabelle's dark eyes run a critical gaze over her bushy hair, her red flannel pyjamas with white spots on them, her bloodshot eyes. The girl pursed her lips then said, "Get dressed. Doesn't matter if it's hideous, just make sure it's something you're happy being seen in public in. Then we're swinging by Taki's to grab you some breakfast then we're heading to the Institute. I want to get to know the new object of my brother's fascination."

By "my brother" Clary presumed she meant Jace. "Why?" She croaked.

Isabelle didn't even acknowledge the fact she'd spoken. She just kept talking. "Therefore, we will train for a short while. I want to see what you can do, mysterious unknown Shadowhunter. Then I am going to force you into one of my dresses, because a preliminary examination of your closet reveals it is _not_ up to normal date standards, and I am going to make you look perfect for your date with Jace."

"It's not a date," Clary protested, rubbing at her eyes further. "We're just friends. And why are you doing this?"

Isabelle paused in her brisk ministrations, and looked Clary in the eye. "Jace has never been. . . interested, in anyone like this before." She admitted, tone earnest. "I want to see what's so special about you that means he is, and I also want to be friends with you so I can be the bridesmaid at your inevitable wedding."

Though her last comment made butterflies swarm in Clary's stomach, she said, "And my mother let you in the door?"

"I can be very charming when I want to be." Isabelle said.

 _I'm sure you can be_ , Clary thought, as the strap to Isabelle's top slipped, revealing a blue and black splotch - a hickey. Isabelle saw her looking, but seemed unaffected by it. "Get changed" was all she said as she went to exit the room.

Clary threw on some shorts and a tank top, then hastily did the laces on her trainers. When she stepped out of her room, Isabelle, who'd seemed to make herself at home on the sofa, ran an assessing eye over her, but didn't grimace. Clary supposed she was in the clear.

Isabelle nodded grimly, and clasped Clary's wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Let's go," she said. "Can you draw us one of those Portals?"

* * *

Clary did draw a Portal, and it spat them out outside Taki's, where the girls promptly ordered breakfast to go, then were on their way again, back to the Institute, where they swiftly devoured said food, and then Izzy was challenging Clary to a sparring match.

"No weapons," was the only rule. "First to pin the other for three seconds wins."

Clary nodded. "Understood."

She let Izzy win the first time. Then the second. Then the third. Many times, actually. She didn't want to draw attention to her superior fighting skills - or answer awkward questions about where, and from who, she got them.

Then the raven-haired girl noticed she was holding back. And Clary was grudgingly impressed with the amount of wrath she showed at it. It was almost comparable to Valentine's.

So she gave it her all. She beat Izzy the first time. And the second. And the third. But then Isabelle seemed to catch on to her fighting style and blocked her thrown punch, before catching her off guard and sweeping her feet from under her. Clary lay on her back, winded, but felt an answering grin bloom on her face as Isabelle looked down at her smugly.

She got up. "Again," was all she said.

And so they did it again. And again. And again. Until both girls, both of them observant, and ready to adapt to new situations, had learned the other's fighting technique and it was like sparring with an old friend. Isabelle joked about having found Clary's weakness, and Clary laughed, for once not afraid she might have. Almost like she trusted her not to exploit it.

It was. . . nice, to have a female Shadowhunter for a friend, with whom she could discuss weapons and Shadowhunter business. Maia was a good friend, one of her best friends, but. . . it wasn't the same.

It was nice.

And then the dread hour was upon them.

Isabelle dragged Clary to her room and practically shoved her into the various dresses she tugged off of the hangers in her closet. Sequins, shimmers, lace, beads, and colours blended together in Clary's mind, until Isabelle's frenzied process halted

"This looks like it would fit," she said, voice slightly uneven. She held up a black dress with spaghetti straps that looked tight enough for her to wear like a second skin. It was short - so short Clary contemplated asking where the rest of it was, even if she already guessed the answer.

It did fit. It fit so well, that Clary almost felt like she was naked, it was that tight. But then Isabelle shoved her into a chair and attacked her face with eyeliner, mascara, eyeshadow, lip gloss, and Angel knows what other torture devices before she stood back, and let Clary see.

"Wow." Clary wasn't sure whether the breathed word came from her or Isabelle.

"Wow indeed.""

She looked. . . badass. The black was as stark against her skin as her runes were, and the uncomfortable shortness of it almost made her stubby legs look long and elegant. Her pasty skin looked more. . . creamy, with the colour scheme of gold and green Isabelle had brushed over her face, and her eyes popped beneath two swooping wings of eyeliner.

Isabelle gave a small smile at her awed expression. "Time to blow Jace away."

* * *

Idris, 2007

Jonathan faced the woman who stood in the pentagram he'd carved. Everything about her was familiar, from her tumbling black hair, to her grey cracked skin, like ashes, to the pull in his blood. _This is her,_ it sang. _This is your mother._

Lilith smiled at him, and it was a joyless thing. "What need do we have of the pentagram, my son? Do you not trust me not to harm you?"

"I don't trust you not to harm my father before the time comes."

She laughed, and it was more like the grating of rock on rock than the sound any human could make. "So to what do I owe this pleasure? As I understood it, you were playing the faithful obedient guard dog, agreeing to bide your time as you waited for him to catch your sister for you." She bared her teeth, and her smirk was unreadable. It might have been in anger, or at amusement of how weak he'd become. "Would you so easily let him steal your prey?"

"His plan is sound," he replied. "But I felt like altering it slightly. Twisting it to my advantage."

Lilith cocked her head. "Oh?"

Jonathan nodded, and smiled then. It was dark, and it was sinister, and it was everything about him he'd always tried to hide from Clary. It was too late now; she knew, and things had been irrevocably changed.

 _He_ had been irrevocably changed. "I'm not sure this world deserves to belong to the humans now. I think it deserves to go to hell."

Lilith bared her teeth, but that was definitely bloodlust glinting in her eye. "And I suppose you want me to do something about that?"

He listened intently, but heard no whisper of a footfall behind him. So he said, "Not quite. I have a deal with a few conditions I'm sure you'll just _love_ to hear."

* * *

 **Sorry if the last part seemed rushed. I'm tired, and I wanted to get this up.**

 **By the way, 100 FOLLOWERS. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.**

 **What do you think will happen in the next chapter? Your thoughts on the ClaryxIzzy mini bonding session? What do you think Jonathan's planning? Review?!**


	14. To Choose Flight

**To Choose Flight**

 _Chapter song: Gone by Beth Crowley_

Idris, 2004

 _"You're not making_ any _sense," Clary informed him bluntly, flipping the pages in the book back and forth idly until it grated on Jonathan's nerves. He slammed his palm down on the book, crumpling a page and making the ink drawing of a snarling werewolf look even more menacing. His heart twanged as Clary flinched violently at the intrusion; she'd been flinching every time he came near her for the past two weeks. He knew that something had changed between them after his. . . slip up, with the faeries , what with letting her believe they weren't going to slaughter innocent beings, but surely a grudge wouldn't last this long?_

 _It made him antsy. She wouldn't hold it against him forever. . . would she?_

 _He hastily retracted his hand from the book at the look she gave him, but kept his hand on the table. She sighed, and glanced at his hand with wariness to her gaze, like she could still see the ghostly blood coating it. "Come on, Clary," he said. His voice came out as irritable. "It's not that hard."_

 _She avoided his gaze, absently straightening out the creased page and turning back to the one on vampires. "I'm serious though," she argued. "How do we know that werewolves were created by demons, when all we have on the demon is that he was dubbed "Wolf" by the humans of that time? He just appeared one day, bit someone, created werewolves, and_ poof _he's gone. Where's the proof?"_

 _A mess of conflicted emotions from both his human and his demon side reacting irrationally to a suddenly distant Clary caused him to say what he said next._

 _Jonathan stood up so quickly the chair he'd been in was sent flying, colliding with the wall in a crunch that made Clary flinch again. At least, that's what he told himself she flinched at. He slammed his hand down on the book again, and she scraped her chair back to get some distance between her and her enraged brother. Despite his violent demeanour, his voice was very, very soft as he purred with venom, "Keep questioning things like that, and father won't be happy."_

 _She scooted back a bit further. Part of him was washed in glee at the look of absolute terror on her face, and he didn't let the other part gain a foothold as he continued raving._

 _"In fact, Clarissa," he spat. "Didn't you ever wonder why our_ dearest _father sent your precious Jace away?" Clary was too shocked to shake her head, so Jonathan kept ranting without giving her a chance to. "He did it because Angel Boy had started questioning things he shouldn't question. 'How do we know the Angel created us, and that all these tapestries and books weren't written by fanatics or liars?' 'Why are Downworlders lesser, when it's perfectly obvious that we all have souls?'_ _And my personal favourite:_ ' _If the Angel truly believed in our cause, why hasn't he come to help us? Why would he leave us to_ die _?'_ "

 _He was breathing very heavily now, as he stepped round the desk to jab a finger in Clary's face. "Father said to me that he'd rather have no son at all, than a son who didn't believe in his cause." He relished in the disgust that crossed her face, even if he knew perfectly well that his words had become half-truths at best. "And so Angel Boy had to go."_

 _He leaned in, until spittle showered Clary's cheeks, but he was too angry to realise the full implications of their proximity. Surprisingly, Clary didn't back away, and only stared back at him with an unyielding defiance._

 _His voice was a hiss. "And if you don't keep quiet about these ridiculous enquiries, he might send you away too."_

 _Clary met his gaze head on. There was no hint of emotion in her face. "Perhaps he will." She said simply, before standing up and walking away._

 _Jonathan was left behind, with the horrible sinking feeling that whatever fragile thing that remained until now, had just been completely and irrevocably shattered._

* * *

New York, 2007

The park was mainly unoccupied at eight o'clock on a Saturday evening which Clary had to note wasn't unusual, especially since she was right near the back end of it, shielded by a row of trees. The pond looked just as grey and cold and uninviting as it did in December, when Clary last travelled to the Seelie Court on a diplomatic visit. She still shuddered at the intense cold she remembered, at the number of warmth runes she'd had to apply to get her body temperature back to anything resembling normal.

"You look nice," a voice commented from behind her. She turned, gripping her elbows, to identify the source as Jace Wayland stepped closer. His eyes roved over her frame. "Although, now I think about it, I don't know why I wasn't expecting you to be in a dress; it's a revel." He paused. "It looks nice on you."

"Why would I be?" She bit back snarkily, ignoring the compliment. "It's not a date."

Something in his eyes shuttered, but he glanced up and down her body again and shrugged casually, looking slightly forced. "No," he said stiffly. "It's not." _Even after you kissed me back you still refuse,_ hissed the unspoken words.

Clary sighed, then rubbed her bicep. She'd managed to coerce Isabelle into letting her wear leggings underneath the tight top she called a dress, and she had thrown on her standard Shadowhunting leather jacket over the top, just so she didn't feeling so. . . naked.

The hunger in Jace's eyes had taken away any remaining protests she might have had.

His demeanour was still stiff and closed off as he offered her his arm, and they waded into the pond together. The water was bitingly cold. The reflection of the moon loomed before them, and Clary was dimly aware of Jace beginning to instruct her on how to proceed, but she released his arm and just stepped forward. There was that rush of water as the clumps of wet hair stuck to her cheeks but she impatiently brushed them away as Jace appeared beside her.

He shivered, then glowered at her as she giggled. He shrugged off his jacket, pulled out a stele, and drew several heat runes on his forearm. He arched his neck and sighed.

"Cold, Angel Boy?" She teased. "Is it all better now?"

He glowered some more, then quirked an eyebrow. "Angel Boy?" He questioned, tossing her a half smirk.

 _Shit._ The old, derisive nickname Jonathan had always lent him just slipped out. She hadn't thought at all. Acting quickly, she plastered an answering smirk on. "So?" She challenged. He just shook his head and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

The gentle padding of fey-soft footsteps alerted Clary to the other presence. Kaelie Whitewillow, her blonde hair perfectly put together and her blue dress perfectly unwrinkled, walked down the hall. Her cerulean eyes lit up when they landed on Jace, and her gaze changed to one of mild curiosity when they dropped onto Clary. They exchanged raised eyebrows, with an unspoken promise that Clary would explain later.

"Jace," she said in a singsong voice. Jace tensed as she got nearer, and her eyes slid to Clary. But he relaxed, and his brows furrowed, at the wide smiles they exchanged. "Clary." Kaelie greeted, just as friendly as she had to Jace.

Clary nodded. "Hey, Kaelie. Is it this way?"

Kaelie nodded. "Yeah. Come along." She reached behind her and seemingly out of nowhere picked up a leaf and a stone, before handing them over. Clary's fingers closed around the stone, and she had to resist the childish urge of testing whether it would light up, like a witchlight. She slipped it into her pocket instead.

The Seelie Court was much as she remembered it, but different all the same. The last time she'd been there, the curtains had been strings of ivy and thorns; now they were made of living butterflies, their wings sewn together so the curtain rustled with their dying movements. Kaelie brushed by without a thought, but Clary tried to cave her shoulders in, so as few butterflies touched her as possible.

Faerie revelries were famous for a reason. The music was hauntingly sweet, and Clary was sure that were it not for the stone in her pocket, or the runes she'd scrawled onto her arms beforehand, she would have joined the dancing and not stopped until her legs were ground down to stumps. She swallowed at the thought, and looked around.

She didn't cringe at the sight of a male faerie with multi-coloured ribbons wound through his ribcage, nor at the female faerie with only gaping holes for eyes. A nixie waltzing around the room holding up a tray of small pink drinks looked up at them, smiled wickedly, and offered them one, but Clary hastily declined. Jace did the same. _Smart boy._

After the faerie had left, and Kaelie had buzzed off somewhere, Jace turned to Clary with a half smile playing about his lips. "Care to dance?"

Clary knew that it wasn't the rational part of her mind acting when she took his hand and let him pull her in.

* * *

About an hour later, Jace had been whisked away by some faerie, who'd caught onto the fact they weren't dating and had wanted to give it a shot, and Clary was lingering at the edge, wanting but not quite daring to touch the poisonous looking array of ivy's draped over the walls.

"Don't worry; they're not poisonous. Well, so long as you don't annoy Her Majesty."

Clary turned to see Kaelie, her lips stained pink with the juice she was consuming, standing behind her. "I'll do my best not to then," she replied softly. Kaelie's kind gaze was shadowed in the underground chamber.

"No one does it intentionally," she murmured. Clary nodded in acquiescence.

"You know, Clary," Kaelie began, with a furtive glance over her shoulder. "We've always been friends haven't we?" Clary nodded slowly. "Never argued, or sold each other out?" Clary shook her head, now wary. Kaelie sighed, then gave a half laugh. "Even that time that I cursed Maia, you didn't turn me in to the staff at Taki's."

"What are you getting at?" Clary asked bluntly.

Kaelie sighed, then leaned in conspiratorially. "I know who your father is."

Clary stepped back, a sharp gasp ripped from her throat, but Kaelie was already reaching for her, an apology on her lips.

"No, Clary! I didn't mean it like that." Kaelie paused, and breathed, a furrow between her brows. It was an oddly human gesture. "I meant to say that I know, but I don't hold it against you. And it's why I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.

"Do you remember, years ago, you and your brother attacked a faerie home?" Kaelie asked. Clary closed her eyes and flinched. Kaelie continued. "I remember, because I was there. I was nearby, with my brothers and sisters. Your brother would have kept attacking us, and then we all would've died; I know, I've seen him in action. But you stopped him." Kaelie gripped Clary's hand. " _You stopped him_. We all would have died, were it no for you. And it's because of that life debt that I have no qualms in telling you what I'm telling you now."

"What is it?" Clary breathed. Her heart battered her ribcage like a prisoners rattling the bars of a cage.

Kaelie's face was grave. "He's here, Clary," she whispered. "Jonathan. He's. . . with the Seelie Queen." Clary didn't need her to clarify what her statement meant. "He's looking for information, on Valentine's behalf. And one of the things he's asking about, is where _you_ are."

Clary's breath caught.

"He's here, Clary, and you need to choose: fight or flight." Kaelie's gaze was disapproving.

Because they both knew which she would pick.

* * *

Jonathan told himself he was just imagining it when his enhanced hearing picked up what sounded like Clary's voice, and when he came out into the main chamber, he told himself that the flash of red that disappeared round a corner was merely a faerie who'd inherited their Queen's hair colour.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

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	15. To Complain About The Timing

**To Complain About Timing**

 _Chapter Song: Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift_

Idris, 1997

 _"Will I ever have a sister?" Clary asked, completely out of the blue._

 _Valentine froze momentarily, and then looked up to observe her with a curious expression as though nothing had happened. But Jonathan had seen the minute motion, and noted it; his father was surprised. Clary had caught him off guard with her, admittedly cryptic, question._

 _Valentine stood from where he was sat, and shut the Gray Book they were using to study runes. He towered over his two children, but his voice was gentle as he addressed his only daughter._

 _"Seraphina," he said. "What do you mean?"_

 _She looked up from where she'd been doodling on the table - not runes, just random designs - and met his eyes. "I mean. . . I've got Jonathan as a brother, and Ja- the other Jonathan as a sort of brother, so I figured. . . Well, if you get Mummy back, will I get a sister?"_

 _Valentine's face was a mask of indifference - that is to say, he was trying to hide his shock. He was so surprised he didn't even look all that riled by Clary's mention of his estranged wife. "Well," he said slowly. He met her eyes with a strange contemplation. "I'm not saying no, but that's a long way off yet, Seraphina. So no promises."_

 _Clary hummed in acknowledgement, then went back to her drawing._

* * *

New York, 2007

"Clary?" Jocelyn called, as soon as she heard her daughter step through the door. "You came back early. What happened?"

Clary swallowed the words. _Oh, you know, my demon of an older brother turned out to be in close proximity to me, my friend implicitly called me a coward, and then I had to leave my other friend without so much as a warning and he's probably vaguely pissed off at me right now._ "I got tired, and told my friend I had to come home." She scratched the back of her neck uncertainly.

Jocelyn pursed her lips as she surveyed her disapprovingly, like she could see right through Clary's lie. In all honesty, she probably could.

But instead of calling her out on it, Jocelyn just turned and went to sit on one of the sofas in the living room, her dressing gown swishing around her as she did so. Clary nervously followed her, and perched next to her on the seat.

Jocelyn's face was solemn as she put a hand on Clary's knee. "Clary. . . I have something to tell you." Her lower lip quivered. "I'm pregnant."

Clary's eyes flicked down to her mother's stomach. Through the dressing gown and the blanket she'd pulled over her lap, it was hard to distinguish, but Clary imagined she could see a faint bump underneath all the layers. "Again?" She asked, sitting back. "Was it Luke?"

Jocelyn stammered, clearly thrown by her statement. "Um. . . Well. . . We. . .yes?" She asked uncertainly. "How did you guess?"

"Mum," Clary said, and her face was perfectly straight. "I've known about you and Luke for years. You're not exactly subtle about it." She paused, then added, "Or quiet." Jocelyn flushed red at the innuendo. "Seriously, I'm not bothered by it. You loves him, and he loves you. You're perfect together."

"Well." Jocelyn said, blinking slightly. "That was easier than expected. And thank you for being so understanding about it."

"It's nothing," Clary waved it away. "How far along are you?"

"How long have I been pregnant?" Jocelyn clarified. Clary nodded. "Just over four months." Clary's eyebrows shot up into her hairline. "And before you ask, I don't know why you hadn't noticed. It's certainly unlike you. Although," she added as an afterthought. "I have been wearing fairly baggy clothes recently." Clary nodded; she'd noticed that. "And you've been. . . distracted, ever since I started showing." Clary couldn't help but notice the pointed exclusion of _what_ , exactly, had distracted her.

"Do you know what the sex is yet?" She asked.

Jocelyn nodded. "Yes, I. . . I went to see Brother Zachariah the day before yesterday. You know, the Silent Brother who's friends with Tessa? And he told me that the baby is a girl."

"What are you going to name her?"

Jocelyn's brows creased as she thought, then said, "I was talking about this with Luke. We were going to name her Adele, after my mother, then Amatis, after his sister."

"Adele Amatis Graymark?" Clary mused. "It has a ring to it."

Jocelyn smiled, then leaned forward and hugged her. "Thank you for being so understanding." She murmured as she pulled back.

Clary nodded, biting her tongue. Knowing what she did now, she could not tell her mother precisely how bad the timing was that she should get pregnant just as Valentine returned. She didn't mention her near encounter with Jonathan in the Seelie Court.

She didn't tell her mother that as soon as she had been promised another daughter, she had almost lost the one she already had.

* * *

Clary listened to the voicemail Jace had left her for a third time.

 _"Hey, Clary, Kaelie says I didn't do anything wrong to make you leave, but if I did then I'm sorry. She also told me to tell you that she has no connection to me anymore, whatever that means. Then I just want to say: You know I like you, and I know you didn't mind kissing me. So, would you mind going on a proper date with me? Maybe if I say please?_

 _I'm sorry about whatever I did today, if I did it But consider my offer?"_

She mulled over it for a moment, then texted him.

 _You didn't do anything - C_

She froze for a second, then sent,

 _And by all means - C_

* * *

Idris, 2007

"So, in short, you discovered _nothing_ from the Seelie Queen?" Valentine growled.

Jonathan huffed. "She wasn't exactly forthcoming with information. Your hatred of Downworlders is fairly well known, you realise."

Valentine only grunted in response. He walked over to the wall of the training, and drew Phaesphoros from the rack.

"I suppose I will have to leave the Mortal Cup till last, then," he mused. He slashed the blade, and it made a dark silver arc in the air. "Jonathan, we're going after the Maellertach instead."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything save the plot.**

 **I'm really sorry about how short this is; I just really needed to get this chapter out of the way before I continue onto the next, which is a time skip forward to after the baby is born. That's when things start getting interesting ;).**

 **Also, I've decided to start doing shout outs to the reviewers! So:**

 **LOVERGIRL (Guest): Thanks for reviewing! I did my best!**

 **Mortaloriginalvampire: Thank you! I'm glad you like it!**

 **Guest: Thanks!**

 **Drakonna101: Thanks! It should be coming along in the next chapter or so. It was meant to be in this one, but I had to change the plot slightly.**

 **Real Life Trash: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy my story!**

 **herondalesduckling: It should be coming along soon ;). Thanks for reviewing.**

 **So... What did you think of this new development? Clary's text? The section at the end? Review?**


	16. To Lose A Friend

**To Lose A Friend**

 _Chapter song: All About You by Birdy_

Idris, 1997

 _"Maellartach." Valentine said, pointing to the illustration in the book. "Also known as the Mortal Sword. It's-"_

 _"One of the three Mortal Instruments, alongside the Cup, and the Mirror, which has been lost for centuries." Clary finished, then beamed, proud of herself as Valentine nodded. He looked faintly irked at being interrupted, but so long as she got it right, he seemed tolerant of it._

 _"That's correct." He said. His stern face was slightly less stern than usual, and Clary grinned with delight._

 _"What does it do?" Valentine asked, then._

 _Clary swallowed, and her brow creased, but Jonathan knew that she didn't know. And to prevent her from embarrassing herself and risking the potential consequences, he cut in, "It forces Shadowhunters to tell the truth in trials, and it physically pains you to hold in the truth, even if you don't outright lie."_ And it hurts even when you want to tell the truth, _he thought, but didn't say._ That's the cruelty of virtue.

 _Valentine nodded. "Correct." He then looked straight at Clary, and gave Jonathan a stern look, which he interpreted to mean,_ 'Don't answer for her this time'. _"Where is it kept?"_

 _Clary bit her lip again, and Jonathan gritted her teeth at the tell tale signs she didn't know it. "The Bone City?" She queried hesitantly, and Valentine raised a brow, but nodded._

 _Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief._

* * *

New York, 2008

 _(Five months later)_

"I still can't believe Clary's an older sister!" Maia gushed, as they sat at their regular table in Taki's. The Lightwoods looked up and raised an eyebrow at her in unison, Alec and Isabelle's faces across the table containing curiosity, Jace's sporting a smirk. She couldn't even see his face, pressed between him and Maia as she was, but she knew it was there.

"Oh?" Isabelle asked, leaning forward eagerly. "What's this? I don't think I've heard that."

In the past five months, Clary had grown much closer to the Lightwoods - and Jace. Even now he looked at her, with affection in the curve of his smile, and devotion in the gleam of his eye.

She couldn't believe there was more. _Refused_ to believe there was more, especially with the war she knew was brewing between her father and the Clave. There had been silence on the matter for several months, and not so much of a whisper of a rumour concerning where he was or what he was doing had reached Clary's ears.

She never mentioned it to her mother, who'd been concerned enough about her own pregnancy as the bump started to be more obtrusive.

But it made her uneasy. It made her feel like her father - or her brother; she had to admit: he was a great strategist - was trying to lull her into a false sense of security.

She refused to be.

So she struggled to hide her constant alertness and state of panic from her newfound friends, lest they looked too far into it.

She looked up and met Alec's eye. He had been the most wary of her story to begin with, but five months later he'd started to soften towards her, just a bit. He'd made her laugh before, and she was growing fond of the boy, even if she had to listen to Magnus' constant rants about him and his "perfect face" every time she was round at the warlock's. She had made it her mission to get them together, but only once this whole Valentine business blew over. She was too stressed as it was right now.

"My mum gave birth last week," she said, swirling the straw in her drink. "A girl, named Adele Amatis."

"Adele Amatis Fray," Isabelle mused. Clary didn't bother to correct her on the surname; it would lead to too many awkward questions. The dark eyed girl fixed her with a glare. "You couldn't have mentioned you have a little half-sister now? I want to meet her, and dress her up in cute little outfits, and be that amazing influence of good fashion taste on a child's life."

"It didn't work on Max; it won't work on Addie," Jace cut in, after a brief silence that was very unlike him. "Besides, I'm pretty sure Magnus is already doing it." He and Clary both threw a glance at Alec, who blushed at the mention of the warlock. Jace grinned, and surreptitiously slipped an arm round Clary's shoulders, settling somewhere around her waist. She blushed herself - despite having dated Jace since he'd asked, she still wasn't used to such blatant displays of affection - and Jace turned his smirk on her, though his arm only tightened.

Isabelle's crestfallen expression lasted for all of a moment before she arched an eyebrow. "Addie?" She questioned, eyeing her brother's arm where it was slung round Clary.

Jace shrugged; his arm shifted against her with the movement. "I've met the girl. That's what Jocelyn and Luke call her; so does Clary. She's cute," he added as an afterthought, then his heated gaze travelled over Clary's freckled cheekbones, and she heard the rest of his unspoken sentence.

Isabelle pouted. "Well I hope I get to meet her soon."

Clary smiled reassuringly at her. "Don't worry; I'm sure you will. She spends half the time at Magnus' anyway, whilst Luke's with the pack and my mum's painting, or sleeping. Tessa is especially fond of her." _And Brother Zachariah_ , she added silently, but she couldn't say that. There'd be Hell to pay if the Shadowhunters found out that one of the Silent Brothers had been secretly warding the hidden children of a fugitive Shadowhunter.

Maia butted in then, glancing at her watch. "When did you say Simon was coming?" She asked.

Clary checked her own watch. "About ten minutes. He'd said he'd leave as soon as night fell."

Maia nodded, and the table fell into a companionable silence.

"By the way," Isabelle said suddenly, leaning in conspiratorially. "Did you hear?"

Alec's stoic expression was suddenly tense. He obviously knew whatever news she was about to impart. The fact that he was glancing over his shoulder in suspicion, and not glaring at her, she supposed, said a lot about the development of their relationship, that he wouldn't object to his sister saying whatever it was to her. It was a gesture of trust.

She felt oddly touched by it.

Jace's arm around her waist tightened, until the point of discomfort.

"The Silent City was attacked." Isabelle breathed. "They don't know who it was, but whoever it was left some of them impaled on spears and hatchets. Some of the bodies had the stitches around the lips ripped off, like-" She took a shuddering breath, and that alone sparked fear in Clary; trained Shadowhunters did not cringe at lesser things. "Like they'd been screaming. And those that got out described an overwhelming, irrational terror, like none they'd ever experienced." Isabelle took a moment to breath. Alec's unmoved face became slightly less unmoved. "Whoever it was took the Mortal Sword."

Clary heartbeat was very loud in her ears.

 _It was him_.

Valentine had made his move.

New born baby or not, Jocelyn _needed_ to know.

Clary went to stand. "Sorry," she said bluntly, firmed detaching herself from her boyfriend's arms, "but I need to go."

Jace's brows immediately creased with confusion - and concern. He reached for her, but she batted him away. A look of hurt flashed across his features, before he said, "Are you okay? You look a little sick."

She _felt_ sick. "I'm fine," she lied. "I just need to. . ." She'd darted out of there before she could finish her sentence.

She only let the breath she'd been holding rush out of her when the door to Taki's swung shut behind her. She immediately went to dart down one of the alleyway openings nearby, where she promptly emptied her stomach and wiped the back of her hand against her face.

She looked up - and froze.

There was a body in the alleyway up ahead.

No; not just any body. Because bile rushed to her throat anew at the sight of the unseeing brown eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles, of the too-white skin, and the gamer t-shirt.

And she vomited again as her eyes trailed downwards, and she spied the bloody, clean slash across Simon's neck.

* * *

 **I'm sorry; I would have updated sooner, but clever me wrote half of a chapter before I realised that I skipped quite a few out, so I had to backtrack.**

 **So, about the chapter.**

 **Don't kill me...**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing but that plot. But then again, I suppose that means what happened in this annoyingly short chapter rest on my shoulders...**


	17. To Acknowledge The Past

**To Acknowledge The Past**

 _Chapter song: Pompeii by Bastille_

Idris, 2004

 _"Do you think Father will ever let me date?" Clary asked, and there was a distinct carefulness to her voice as she asked that question. It had been another two weeks since Jonathan's explosion, and he ached for the familiarity she would converse with him with before that accursed demon hunt. She'd held short, stilted conversations with him on occasion, but that was as far as it went, and she was now a far cry from the chattering little sister he'd always known._

 _It was almost like she was growing up without him._

 _But it appeared that over those several silent weeks, she'd retained that flawless ability of coming up with questions even he wasn't prepared to answer, because he found himself stumbling over his words. "Um. . . What?" He asked, and decided to keep his eyes firmly riveted to the target he was meant to be throwing knives at. He threw it, and it landed dead centre._

 _She huffed, but she didn't so much as cast him a sidelong glance for making a shot that they both knew she would never be able to pull off, no matter how hard she tried, instead continuing to slash at the training dummy with an expertise that was at odds with her innocent demeanour. She disembowelled it swiftly and precisely, with a remarkable apathy, before walking to the side of the room and wiping her forehead of sweat. She grabbed a strip of navy blue cloth and used it to tie her hair back from where it had been falling in her face._

 _She didn't look at him. "Date." She repeated. "Girlfriend, boyfriend. Kissing. Possible marriage. Do you think Father will ever let me have that?"_

 _He had the sinking feeling he knew what had triggered those thoughts, and that sent his demon raging and roaring at him, to eliminate the boy who dared gain his sister's attention. He really shouldn't have mentioned the Angel Boy that other week. "Possibly an arranged marriage to someone in the Circle." He said, noticing, with a great satisfaction, as she cringed at the thought. "But the whole falling in_ love _thing," the word tasted bitter on his tongue, "probably not. You're barely allowed to leave the cottage, for Angel's sake. How are you supposed to fall in love?" He gritted his teeth before he said anything more._

 _He realised that Clary had moved, and was now stood in the centre of the room, a dagger balanced carefully in her hand. Her face was so blank not even he could read it, but when she moved - one fluid motion - and threw the dagger so it rotated in mid air and sunk hilt deep into the target, the third ring from the centre. She cursed under her breath._

 _Jonathan blinked at the force she must have exerted to sink it in that deep. No matter what showed on her face, she was angry._

 _Usually this was be a cue to keep his mouth shut._

 _He didn't take it._

 _"Why are you asking that?" He asked bitterly, and that fringe of bitterness was all his demon needed to seize control of his vocal chords. He kept talking, and his voice kept rising in volume. "Thinking about Angel Boy?" He spat. Clary looked up suddenly, a deer-in-the-headlights expression plastered to her face. "Would he be the first person you'd want to marry, if it came down to that?"_

 _She didn't appear to notice the anger; she probably thought it was just overprotectiveness. She was facing away from him, so she didn't see the honed, deadly rage that crossed his face, and said, with the most flippant tone she'd been able to muster in the past few weeks, "I might've had a small crush on him at one point."_

 _Everything stilled, and went silent over the roaring in his ears._

 _He. Did. Not._

 _That boy did not ensnare his sister's heart so easily, and left such a lasting impression. Not with Jonathan standing right next to her._

 _He let the rage wash over him, and before he knew it, he was moving. Dropping the hatchet he held in his hands, and shrugging off the belt of knives, and moving towards Clary, who whirled to face him head on. Something sparked inside him at the sight of the terror that overtook her features as she saw the lethal rage in his face, and she made to back away._

 _But he grabbed at her hand before she could, and his grip was as final as an iron shackle as he dragged her round and used his other hand to grab her shoulder and slam her back up against the wall, so she was forced to look up at him._

 _And then, the demonic glee completely drowning out the pleas of the shred of humanity left inside him, he kissed her._

 _She went rigid under his touch and her mouth stayed firmly closed, though he insistently tried to coax it open with his lips. Her hands came up to push him away, but he tightened his grips on them under he heard something snap, and she whimpered in pain. He swallowed the sounds, and bit down on her lip until she cried out again._

 _She did, and he took the opportunity to deepen it. But she bit down on his tongue, and he tasted bitter blood as it spurted out, and he drew back hastily, and backhanded her across the face._

 _Her head snapped to the side, black blood trailing down her chin from where her bite had cut his skin. She looked up at him, panting, and he saw something he had never seen in Clary's eyes, directed at him at least: Hate._

 _She opened her mouth to say something, but he stepped forward and pressed his body up against hers, forcing her to crane her neck if she wanted to keep eye contact. She had never looked so small._

 _His voice was low and vicious. "You are_ mine, _Clary." He intoned, and she tried to shake her head, but she didn't have enough space, pressed up against the wall. "You are mine, and I don't care who father engages you to, I don't care if you swear to be a virgin forever; you will always be mine. I will end up marrying you, or having you, and there is nothing you, or anyone else can do about it. We were meant to be together," he said, ignoring the look of complete disgust that crossed her face, "and we will be."_

 _"Jonathan," she hissed. "You. Are. My. Brother. This is wrong."_

 _"How is it wrong,_ dearest sister _?" He challenged. "I've been protecting you all these years, exactly as a brother should. Does it matter that I had a different motivation, so long as the endgame is the same: to keep you safe? Does it really matter that we're siblings, when our blood is already so tampered with?"_

 _Her brow creased in confusion. "What-"_

 _"I protected you when we were on that hunt." He stated. "I trained you when Father couldn't, I held you when you cried about Angel Boy, even though I hated his guts. I even kept your secret that it was you who freed the Downworlders all those months ago-"_

 _"What?" A deep voice interrupted him. "That was you?"_

 _They both froze as Valentine Morgenstern stalked into the room, his face graver than death. "Seraphina?"_

 _Clary lifted her chin, and stared him in the eye, defiance limning the lines of her face. "Yes. It was me."_

 _Valentine's face was unreadable for a second, until he said, "Come with me."_

* * *

New York, 2007

Clary wasn't sure she was breathing.

 _Simon._

No. _No no no no no no no._

Simon _could not_ be dead. She refused to accept it.

A strangled gasp ripping out of her, she ran over to where he was slumped, half supported by the wall, and fell to her knees. A faint stinging skated across her skin but she was numb to it, instinctively reaching out a hand to grip Simon's shoulder, and to press the other one to his chest. Tears - of frustration, of terror - slipped down her cheeks and she impatiently blinked them away. This was not a time to cry.

Of course Simon didn't have a heartbeat. He was a vampire.

So her hand crept back up to his bony shoulder, the t-shirt there black with blood, and she shook and _shook_ and _shook_ but all that happened was his head lolled to the side, and his eyes opened. Unblinking. Unseeing.

She stifled a scream building in her throat.

The bloody gash across his throat was horrendous to behold, and she averted her eyes after a moment, nausea gripping her stomach.

Healing - why wasn't his vampire healing saving him? Why wasn't the skin knitting back together, like someone had torn apart a cloth and the stitches were being redone?

She willed herself to stay calm, to focus, and cast her mind back to when she was learning about vampires and their abilities. Blood - they needed blood. It was like fuel to them, and they couldn't operate without it, so much to the point that if a vampire hadn't fed in a few days their instincts would cause them to lash out at the nearest animal, and drain it until it was dead.

But if Simon's throat had been slit, if he'd lost all that blood. . .

Resolution firm in her heart, she unbuckled one of the knives at her side and dragged it along the inside of her unprotected, tender wrist.

And stuck it in Simon's mouth.

He was unresponsive at first, and she hissed at him with venom, " _Drink_." Whatever the reason was, it worked, as his fangs shot out like hidden blades and plunged into her wrist.

She gasped as she felt the blood being pulled out of her, and felt the gentle edge of that glimmering darkness flutter. Her eyes slid shut, and she propped them open. No, too much. She couldn't let him take too much. She reached up to pull her hand away.

And then he was lunging - lunging for her exposed neck, and she grappled with him as he pinned her to the ground. "Simon!" She barked, as the bloodlust in his eyes glazed over that familiar brown. He blinked, then looked down at her, then seemed to come to his senses.

"Clary," he said. "What- what were you thinking? I could have killed you." He said, eyes widening. He stood up, and ran his hands through his hair. "I could've killed you," he repeated, with a half-mad edge to his voice.

"But you didn't," she said simply, standing up herself. "You didn't. I'm alive, and you're alive- well, conscious - and everything is going to be okay." Her breath caught, and she repeated it to itself like a mantra. "Everything is going to be okay."

His eyes told her he knew that wasn't true, but he didn't comment on what they both feared: That this attack would be the first of many.

"Clary," he said, then froze as he beheld whatever was over her shoulder. Her muscles locked up as the raw terror in that gaze.

So she turned, and as the rest of her went cold, Simon's heatless body was a beacon of warmth behind her.

Jonathan Morgenstern, white hair falling in his eyes, armed to the teeth with runed daggers and sword, smirked, and drawled, "Fancy seeing you here, Clarissa."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

 **I'm sorry for my absence. I recently read A Court of Thorns and Roses, and my enthusiasm for that series completely killed my enthusiasm for this one. To be honest, I'm still not entirely over it.**

 **What did you think? Review?**


	18. To Commit Oneself

**To Commit Oneself**

 _Chapter song: Turning Tables by Adele_

Idris, 2004

 _"I had hoped, Seraphina," Valentine said, "That you would prove more amicable than your brother." Clary walked beside him at the same slow, unhurried pace, and she would have thought this odd were it not obvious that he was tensed to grab her if she tried to run._

 _She wasn't stupid enough to try. Evading her punishment would probably just increase it tenfold._

 _"It pains me to see I was mistaken," he finished, folding his hands purposefully behind his back. Clary eyed them sidelong, wondering how many bruises they would create, the way she created blossoms with her paintbrush. "It appears you will need as much discipline as your brother, if it's true you were the one who released my experiments."_

 _Clary didn't bother nodding, but nor did she try to deny what she'd done. She was even proud of it._

 _Valentine sighed at her lack of response, and as they turned another corner, he turned to a door Clary had never noticed before. She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, as she thought back to what she'd witnessed with the "experiments" all those weeks ago._

 _"Father-" she started, but Valentine levelled her a glare that had her involuntarily snapping her jaw shut so fast a part of her wondered whether he'd used magic, rather than merely relying on his disapproving stare. His lips, which always rested in a frown anyway, tugged further downwards, until a scowl was carved onto his severe face._

 _"Seraphina," he said, opening the door. It led into darkness. He jerked his chin at it, and said, "Get in."_

 _She gulped, but her feet moved of their own volition - or common sense - and stepped into the darkness of the passage he gestured to._

 _She wrinkled her nose at the stench that hit her, and it set her heart pounding like the footsteps of a terrified doe as she fled from a hunter. The metallic scent of blood, twisted and warped into something that brought bile to her throat. She shivered, and goose bumps pricked on her arms like the minute scratches of needles as she walked away in. She didn't acknowledge them, or what might have caused them as she kept walking, painfully aware of her father's heavy footsteps behind her._

 _Between one blink and another, they had passed into what looked like a torture chamber, or a cell._

 _It wasn't a small room, but nor was it particularly large. There was a rack of weapons at the back,_ things _that Clary had never been taught how to use, or name. She was grateful for it. A table was in the centre, and though she averted her eyes the moment they settled on it, she couldn't rid the image of the stained wood out of her head._

 _However, her attention was caught, and riveted to, the far corner Valentine was making a beeline for, with mangled, worn leather straps lying discarded on the floor, and what looked like fresh blood gleaming on the dirty floor._

 _Black blood. The same colour as Jonathan's._

 _No one had ever told Clary why Jonathan's was black. Why he was so worried about being a monster._

 _She had never dared to ask._

 _Valentine's gaze was as steady as an executioner's grip on the axe as he stood by that corner, and tilted his head. "Seraphina," he said, with no room for argument in his tone. "Stand here."_

 _Clary did. She flinched as he harshly and without gentleness fastened the leather straps around her wrists. That black blood on the straps - Jonathan's blood - burned her skin like ichor, and she hissed in pain through her teeth._

 _Valentine's mask of cool amusement didn't crack. "That's Jonathan's blood that's burning you." He said with an offhanded casualness. "Didn't you ever wonder why his blood was black, and not red, like ours is? Didn't you ever notice that he acted different, to you and I, more vicious, more. . . twisted?"_

 _Her mind flashed back to his behaviour earlier in the training room, and her heart stuttered._

 _"I gave your mother demon blood when she was pregnant with your brother," Valentine continued, and his mouth twisted with a cruel delight at the distraught expression on her face. He used his grip on the leather straps her hands were bound with to yank her round so she faced into the corner. "Take off your top."_

 _Sensing that disobedience, wouldn't be tolerated, and with a dawning dread on what was going to happen, she did so. He didn't ask her to remove her training bra, but she still shivered against the hiss of cold, damp air against her exposed midriff._

 _She physically flinched at the scrape of something being picked up off the table, and the wet thud as it uncoiled like a striking asp, hitting the floor. She scrunched her eyes tight as she heard the whoosh, like the air itself was parting for the weapon, in an attempt to get away._

 _The first lash was so hard that her body bowed until she was convinced she would snap in two. The shock of impact left her teeth and head ringing, and she felt the sheet of blood pour down her back before the pain flared up, dragging a noise that was half scream, half sob, from her throat._

 _"You and your brother were both experiments." Valentine said calmly, even as she screamed. "As was the other Jonathan. But I think Jonathan was the only one who passed. Why do you think I sent the other boy away? He was too soft for the blood that ran through his veins." A pause, in which she could only gasp, as tears spilled down her cheeks. "As are you."_

 _She took great heaving breaths as the whip was drawn back; her shoulders shuddered under the impact that hadn't yet come._

 _The second lashing overlapped the first, marking a fiery cross on her back. Her eyes rolled back into her head, until she could see the blood vessels of her retina, and everything was red-_

 _The world was tinged red; whether from the pain, or the blood seeping into her eyes and mixing with the tears that gleamed on her cheekbones. The sky was an arched ceiling painted with blood; the ground was cracked and dusted with sand the colour of rust; rivers and chasm snaked through it, crimson flames roaring from the bottomless depths. The drumbeats were there, making her head ache, making it hard for her to think straight, and this strange world was so_ hot _, sweat gleaming at her hairline, on her forehead, dripping off her chin. . . or was that blood?_

 _The third lash ripped through this newfound world of pain, and tore a fathomless abyss right through it. The first touch of the shadows within were cool; not relieving her pain, but numbing her to it._

 _So Clary let herself freefall into the darkness, alone._

* * *

New York, 2007

"Jonathan," Clary breathed, and she hated the sight of him before her, hated the fact that her voice trembled when she addressed him, hated the fact that Simon could be caught in the crossfire.

Her brother smiled a dark, hideous smile. She'd seen it on him before - of course she had - but it had never scared her before. She had trusted him.

Now it terrified her witless.

"Clarissa." He replied, and his voice seemed to curl round her name, like a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of its prey. His dark eyes landed on Simon, and a faint sneer contorted his lips. Clary's heart beat in her throat, her head, her ears, and his growing smirk told her he could hear it, but she forced herself to think over the fear.

First things first: _Get Simon out of here._

Jonathan's pale eyebrows had climbed halfway up his face. He narrowed his eyes at Simon over Clary's shoulder, and that mocking smile playing about his lips made Clary's insides freeze up. "Tell me, _sister_ ," he sneered, and her mouth went dry. "What is your affiliation for Downworlders? First it was the ones in father's cell." The casual mention of that incident, and the punishment for it, was what made her anger swell until it overpowered her fear. She glared at him. "And now it's the bloodsucker."

Her hands curled into fists. She snarled.

He only chuckled.

It was that chuckle, the sheer arrogance and insolence behind him, that set her off, like a match to the tinder. She reached for her belt, grimacing at the sparse few daggers she had on her. She'd only come to catch up with friends; she hadn't expected to fight.

Stupid girl. Foolish girl. Conflicts didn't arrange themselves around one's schedule.

Nevertheless, despite her feeling of overwhelming inadequacy, she drew her dagger. It felt as insignificant as a toothpick against her brother's towering lean frame - as much as weapon himself as any of those judiciously littered about his gear.

He grinned at her, and moving faster than her eye could track, he drew a throwing star, cocked his hand, and let it fly. Clary watched it turn in the air, feet planted, and twisted to avoid it as it soared-

Until she was shunted sideways by the sort of force incomprehensible by anyone but her brother. She tripped and was sprawled over the alley way floor, before her training kicked in and she rolled, the blade in her hand cutting a shallow scratch in her forearm, scraping her knees against the asphalt, and getting to her feet.

Just in time to see Jonathan snarl as he lunged forward, and see Simon go flying through the air, and collide with the wall. He slid to the ground like a broken doll, and something dark and truly, truly terrible formed in her chest.

She fumbled with her blade, anger making her motions sloppy, and threw it with all the strength she could muster at her brother.

The shot flew wide.

Jonathan barked a cruel laugh, and said, "You've fallen out of practice, little sister," before he attacked.

The first blow felt like a sledgehammer to her skull. She blinked away the stars in her eyes before she raised her hand half-heartedly to block his next strike. Her wrist snapped back, and she bit down a scream.

She had forgotten how strong, how fast, her brother was. How lethal.

He punched her again in the head, and her vision flickered. She slid to the ground, and rolled to avoid the kick he aimed at her ribs. He hadn't yet drawn his blades; whether it was because he thought his hands would be more efficient, or because he wanted to draw out the physical suffering for as long as possible in punishment for her abandonment, she didn't know. He slammed his foot down on her hand as it reached for her dropped blade; she heard a crackling and felt a shooting pain as the boot made contact.

He raised his hand for what she knew would be the final blow; whether to knock her out and take her home, or kill her, it didn't matter. But this would be the last blow. She could feel it in her bones.

"Please," she said, and her voice cracked like the snap of the whip from so long ago. "Please, Jonathan, don't do this."

Clary felt him pause at that, if only in puzzlement.

"You're appealing to my better nature?" He asked incredulously. "For mercy? I know you're not that stupid, Clary."

The nickname slipped out, like the sight of her was making it difficult not to slip into the past.

"No," she croaked. In his bloodlust, he hadn't noticed her slip her able left hand into her belt, and drew out the smallest knife she had on her. "But if you try to hit me again, I'll put this in my heart before you can make contact."

He froze at that. His eyes went wide, fixing on the blade poised above her breast. Something flickered behind him, but she ignored it.

Neither of them were breathing.

She met his eyes, unflinching, and said with a clarity that was impossible to misunderstand. "I won't go back there."

He flinched - minutely, but it was a flinch. He took a step back. "Clary," he got out, but she fixed him with a look, and he took another step back. And another. And another.

"Get away from me," she said, and though her tone was steel, it broke halfway through. She propped herself up on her elbows, and glared. " _Get away._ "

Surprisingly enough, he reached for his hand, twisted the Morgenstern ring, and disappeared.

Clary slumped against the wall when she realised who had been standing behind him before he did.

Jace's gaze was hard as his eyes travelled around the alley way, to fix on her. His tone was acid as he spat, "I think you have a few things to explain, _Seraphina_."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.**

 **What did you all think? Review?**


	19. To Revisit Certain Deceptions

**To Revisit Certain Deceptions**

 _Chapter song: Angel With A Shotgun by The Cab_

Idris, 2001

 _The noise from outside was what finally drew him out of the book he was reading. The Odyssey was confusing to say the least, only made more so by the fact that his father had insisted Jace read it in the original language. Nevertheless, he was so focused on the story that by the time the noises had reached the threshold of the manor garden, he had only just noticed them._

 _Quick as a whip, he was at the window, the Odyssey falling to the ground with a heavy thud, forgotten. Golden eyes as wide as bejewelled plates, he peered out of the window._

 _He bit back his cry of relief as he spied his father in the garden, limping up the path. But then his attention zoned in on the source of the limp, and a increasingly large patch of scarlet blood soaked the leg of his trousers. Spots of blood speckled his shirt and face, and the tips of his white hair were stained crimson. His hand was clenched in a fist around his dagger, drenched from the tip of the blade to his wrist. The question was: Was it his?_

 _Jace ran. He pounded down the stairs, and out of the manor, until he skidded to a halt looking up at his father, who glanced down at him with worried dark eyes. Michael ushered him back inside, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder, and once they crossed the threshold of the house, he immediately whirled to draw several of the massive bolts that shuddered in the doorframe._

 _"Jonathan," his father panted with a desperate urgency that Jace would never be able to fit with the image of the stern, disapproving man he had known. "Listen to me. You have to run. Hide somewhere in the manor."_

 _Jace didn't respond, and he couldn't stop trembling. For once, Michael didn't chide him for his evident terror._

 _"Run." He reiterated. "Hide." When Jace still didn't move, he began shouting. "Listen to me, Jonathan! There are bad men coming for me, and if they see you, they will hurt you too." He kissed Jace's head, and the shock jarred him; Michael had_ never _showed that much affection before. "Hide. For me, Jonathan, hide. Promise me you will." A pause, then_ "Promise me."

 _"I- I promise." Jace stammered. His father smiled a grim smile, then gave him a hard shove._

 _"Then go." A beat. "_ Go! _"_

 _Jace went._

 _He curled up in the back of the cupboard beneath that was filled with all those tubes carrying water to and fro. He clamped down on his whimper as a massive bang shook the front door on its hinges; shook the world. And he stopped breathing altogether at the sound of the second bang, with debris flying, and the clop of the heavy, decisive footsteps as they stopped over the threshold._

 _He opened the door the slightest fraction of an inch, just in time to see two men converge on his father, who was backing against the wall. One of them was large and well built; the other tall and thin, with a grey beard. They laughed at something, and Michael spat a few words Jace couldn't make out over the ringing in his ears, and then-_

 _The arc of silver, the spray of red, and the crunch of bone were things Jace would never forget, so long as he lived._

 _The man stepped in front of his view just as the knife made contact, so thankfully he never saw the severing of his father's head from his body, but the sound was enough._

 _He quietly vomited in the corner of the cupboard as he let the door slip shut, blocking out all light._

 _He was vaguely aware of the men dragging his father's corpse out of the place, but the darkness of the cupboard left room for his eyes to see that one moment played on repeat, even as he saw the spurt of blood that could only come from one cutting through an artery._

 _As soon as the sounds of the men dissipated into something that goes bump in the night, he climbed out of the cupboard, heedless of his stiff limbs, and edged around the pool of blood._

 _Then he ran._

* * *

New York, 2008

Clary smiled a small, bitter smile. "How long have you known?"

Jace's face was carved of ice as he jerked a chin at his arm - at the scar that ran from elbow to wrist there. "Since Pandemonium. Two people who look freakishly similar, with a scar in precisely the same place?" He pursed his lips. "It was too much of a coincidence."

She choked. "You've kept it a secret for that long? Why?"

"Because I wasn't sure. Because there were too many loose threads in your story, and I wanted to take the time to unravel them. Because perhaps I didn't want to think about the implications of what it would mean if it turned out to be true."

Because Jace wasn't stupid, and he knew that if his childhood friend had survived the attack - if _she_ had survived the attack - then that might mean his father - no, _her_ father - had survived as well. And she knew that the knowledge that his idolised role model had abandoned him to be adopted, and hadn't come for him, would break Jace apart.

Jace cocked his head, observing her with a keenness she recognised. A keenness she had taught him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why leave me to figure it out?" He took a step closer. "You must have known I would work it out eventually. That we would have this conversation. Why postpone it?"

She swallowed. "Can we not talk about it here?"

Jace's eyes shuttered; the slight vulnerability he'd let slip hidden behind walls thicker than those of the Adamant Citadel. He spread his arms in a mocking gesture, encompassing the whole dirty alleyway, the pool of blood, and Simon's limp form. _Simon_.

"What better place?" He replied snarkily.

But she didn't reply, instead shoving past him to get to her friend lying in a position that would probably have broken a few bones in any human. Before her eyes, she saw as the advanced healing properties vampires had - the ones that had been restored when she gave him her blood - begin to stitch up the mess at the back of his head, and the several sections of his legs that appeared to be broken.

Before she knew it, it was just Simon lying there. She tapped his temple once, twice, and though he didn't wake, his eyelids fluttered slightly. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Jace had come to kneel beside her, and she jolted as he said, "What happened to him?"

She glared as she bit back, "Don't you know? How long were you standing there, anyway?"

His face remained neutral, but he looked away, and his throat bobbed. "I only heard the last part."

Where she'd threatened to kill herself, and had somehow managed to scare Jonathan away.

"Well," she said, slightly softened towards him. "Jonathan threw him at the wall when he tried to defend me."

Jace nodded solemnly, and helped her to lift Simon to his feet. There was a tense silence, fraught with the unspoken question, before Jace voiced it. "Who- Who _was_ that?"

"Jonathan." She said, and though she tried to keep her tone expressionless, there was a dark inflection to her voice. "My brother."

Clary could almost feel the questions Jace was suppressing begin to crest into a swamping wave, but he just said, "Your brother. . . Jonathan looked-" He swallowed. "He looked very much like my father, from what I could see."

And there it was.

There was the thread of hope and horror Jace had been clinging to for the past five months, one she could easily take and weave into a rope to hang him with, provided she wanted to.

So she said, very, very carefully, "People always say he looks as much like my father as I look like my mother."

Jace froze, just as she gently took Simon's shoulder and shook him again. But Jace's voice was a wisp of sound as he asked, " _Your_ father?"

She nodded. "Michael Wayland was not your father." She told him, and her chest ached at his expression, like someone had punched him in the gut. "And the man you knew wasn't Michael Wayland anyway. He was my father."

"Then who- who _is_ my father?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I just know who isn't." She hefted Simon's arm round her shoulder, so they were sharing his weight. He groaned, drawing her attention to him, and she added, "I'll tell you the full story - answer all your questions, I promise - but we should get him back to his house first."

Jace's throat bobbed again, and his face was shadowed as he said, "Alright."

* * *

They dropped off Simon at his mother's house, where Elaine Lewis accepted Clary's story that he'd tripped over and bashed his head, and took him in. They Portalled to the Institute, where Jace took her hand and led her in. The rattling of the golden birdcage elevator was comfortably familiar, but that familiarity plummeted in her gut as Clary stepped in the corridor, only to see a tall, stern woman standing there.

By how similar she looked to Alec and Isabelle, Clary presumed this was Maryse.

Maryse's icy blue eyes narrowed on Jace and Clary's intertwined hands, and then she glared at her, the gaze ripe with suspicion. "And who is this?" She snapped.

Jace jumped, but smiled at his adoptive mother when he noticed her. "Maryse," he greeted warmly. "You're back early." He then followed the woman's gaze to where it was fixated on Clary, and his smile dropped as surely as her heart. "Oh, this is Clary Fray, a Shadowhunter who lives somewhere in New York."

"There are no Shadowhunters besides us living in New York, let alone outside of the Institute," Maryse cut out coldly. "And the fact that there happens to be one, so soon after the attack on the Silent City, beggars belief. Which leaves her to either be a liar," she paused, and Clary grew very, very cold. "Or a spy."

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

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	20. To Be Locked Up

**To Be Locked Up**

 _Chapter song: Strange Birds by Birdy_

Idris, 2004

 _Clary gasped when she came to._

 _The darkness was a tangible thing, that pressed against her eyelids and wrapped itself around her pale wrists like shackles. All she could see of her own body was the barest smudge of dark grey against the night-dark black. Fear gripped her swiftly and suddenly as she pushed herself off of the wall she was leaning against, and she ran her hands down the sides of her body, feeling the flat breasts, the barely developing curves, and the rough scratch of the leather training gear. She still wore the trousers she'd been wearing before everything went to hell, but the top she'd been forced to remove wasn't there, and instead someone had thrown on her jacket over her training bra, so she didn't freeze to death down here._

 _Wherever_ here _was._

 _Was this where Jonathan came when he disappeared for hours at a time? She'd always been told he was out hunting this or that, which was why he always came back blood soaked and tired. Was he really just ensconced in here, after being - she swallowed against the reality of it - beaten?_

 _She sagged back against the wall she couldn't see, and ran an arm along it, feeling the rough surface of stone scrape her palm. She gritted her teeth as the motion stretched her back, and a few sparse trickles of blood itched over it, where she presumed the whip marks had scabbed over. She touched her face gingerly, and felt the sensitive skin there, bruising no doubt blossoming across her face in a garish explosion of colour. She let herself sink back down to the floor, but she whimpered and froze when the motion further tore open the scabs. She carefully disconnected herself from the wall, and went to kneel._

 _How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? It was less than two months ago that she'd freed her father's experiment's and it had steadily collapsed from there. Seeing her father for the monstrosity he really was. . . Seeing Jonathan go in to slaughter those innocent faeries with no inhibitions towards their deaths. . . It had changed her views on them and the world. Irrevocably. It had changed_ her.

 _Perhaps she'd been blind before. Perhaps now she was looking at the reality of her world._

 _She didn't want to think about it, but her brother's actions in the training room before fit in with this new version of reality. He'd acted. . . like a demon. Like a godforsaken demon._

 _A demon._

 _Her brother was a demon._

 _She felt the words sink through her, leaving a trail of scars in their wake._

You and your brother were both experiments. As was the other Jonathan.

 _She stuffed her fist in her mouth as she choked on a scream._

 _Her father had poisoned her brother. With- with_ demon _blood._

 _What had he done to_ her _?_

 _She felt the beginnings of hate begin to kindle in her chest._

I cannot stay here any longer.

 _The thought surfaced in her head like a bubble rising from deep underwater, and lingered, catching the light in a thousand different colours._

I have to get away.

 _A so, deep inside her, a fire was lit. She didn't know how long she sat crouched in that cell, sometimes sleeping, sometimes dreaming, dried blood tickling her cheeks, nursing that fire, but she poured her being into it, so when Valentine opened the door an indefinite amount of time later, she followed after him numbly. Letting him think her a broken, obedient shell, even as she positively burned with the force of her hatred and anger._

 _He left her in her night-shrouded room, with a stele to heal herself, and a few barked commands that he'd check on her in the morning._

 _She was gone by first light._

* * *

New York, 2007

The room they locked her in was neat and dusty, on of the many unused guest rooms of the Institute that hadn't been touched for years. They'd made sure to take her stele and her weapons off of her before they threw her in here, and now she sat on the bed, idly crossing and uncrossing her legs, head pounding from where Jonathan had slammed it against the wall.

She did her best not to look at the walls surrounding her, nor try the door. She focused on her breathing, and allowed it to slow her panicked heart beat, allowed it to wipe away years of having to have a light on when she slept, having to sleep on the floor even, because the sheets were suffocating her.

Maryse had thrown her in here, and said that she could come out when it was time for her trial with the Clave. Which didn't look particularly likely to happen any time soon, considering Valentine had stolen the Mortal Sword, and the surviving dregs of the Silent Brothers had disappeared and fled into hiding.

Clary had been counting the sunsets she could see from her window, and counting the rotation of the meals that got delivered by an irate old man named Hodge. So far, she'd been here for three days.

 _Three days_. How was her mother coping? Jocelyn had to understand that she needed to look after Addie first and foremost, and not do anything reckless, right? And although she knew Luke would be furious, Maia would be furious, Magnus would be furious. . . they had to help her mother see that.

The days passed, until Clary found that she just spent hours every day either sleeping and eating, staring out of the window at the city that zoomed by beneath her. She'd assessed the window sill and the gargoyles perched around it for escape, but deduced that not even the most talented of tumblers could make the jump and survive. So she was left watching the world, and other people's lives, go by, even as her own remained stagnant.

She'd stiffened one day as she saw, from her window sill, the old man Hodge who'd been delivering her meals lean out of a lower story window - not too far; oh, Clary knew all about Hodge's curse - to release a familiar raven from its perch on his arm. Clary had tensed up as she saw Hugin fly in lazy circles through the air. He eyed her with a wicked amusement, then flew off, no doubt to report to Valentine all about the situation at hand.

Well, at least she now knew who the traitor at the New York Institute was.

Six days had passed by the time she heard a tentative, fluttering knock at her door. She grumbled a "Come in" but didn't move from her seat at the window, nor flick her eyes from the distant horizon.

The door creaked open, and Jace crept in. She turned then, and cocked her head. "What are you doing here?"

He didn't answer, only shut the door behind him and went to sit on the bed. She watched him warily all the way. Finally, he said, "Izzy and Alec are pissed off at you. they don't understand why you lied." She just swallowed, and he didn't take down his guarded expression. "Now, you promised me answers."

She nodded. "I did."

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then her soft voice filled the room for several minutes, recounting the two of them growing up, and then how he was sent away, then how she ran away (though she didn't specify why; never why), and how Valentine was not his father, but rather hers, and that she'd been running from him and anyone who might recognise her for the past few years.

And in return, he shared with her the feeling of what it was like to come out of Taki's and find her prone on the ground, a knife angled over her heart, and a teenager who looked eerily similar to his dead father standing over her. How the sight had briefly frozen him with horror and how by the time he was able to move, the teenage boy had gone, and she was getting to her feet and looking over at him as he spat those damning words.

Then he finally told her that Maryse had received notice that she had an official Clave trial tomorrow at sundown, where she was expected to explain who she was and what she was doing, and then they would decided what to do with her.

He left then, saying he'd be back in the morning to pick her up for it, and Clary was left with the sinking feeling that Valentine had somehow orchestrated this.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

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	21. To Reveal Your Existence

**To Reveal Your Existence**

 _Chapter song: Words as Weapons by Birdy_

New York, 2007

 _"So," Simon said, his finger absently drifting up to that spot on his neck between the juncture of his jaw and spine, where the artery pulsed. Where it had once pulsed, at least. Clary felt sick just looking at the black veins, standing out stark against his suddenly milky skin, so she looked away. "Why are you and your mother hiding from the Clave? Surely if your father's-" he lowered his voice "_ evil _, then that's grounds for them to give you some form of protection, right?"_

 _Clary shifted on the bench, and allowed Simon to chalk the gesture up to the cold. They were sitting on a bench, in the middle of the park, a good few hours before dawn. Of course it was cold, steaming July weather be damned. "No," she admitted. "The Clave thinks I'm dead. No, actually, scratch that - they think my mother and Luke are dead. And my father and my brother. They don't know I exist at all."_

 _"I got that part," he said impatiently, waving his hand. It was such a human gesture - such a_ Simon _gesture - that it was jarring to see it performed in her friend's strange new body. "What I'm trying to say is: why not? Why aren't you living it all up and lordly with the rest of the Shadowhunters? I mean, technically you've done nothing wrong. What could they possibly do to you?" He paused, then, "Not that I'm complaining, but why are you bothering to interact with lowly mundanes and Downworlders anyway? Why bother to help some random fledgling vampire, when as you said, the fate of the world is literally at stake?"_

 _She swallowed when he gestured to himself, at the_ other _body he now found himself stuck in. She caught his hand as he did so, and clasped it between hers, the white skin chilly beneath her already frozen fingers. The wind tugged at the scarf hastily thrown round her neck and sent the tail of it slamming into his face. She met his eyes, and she felt the breath he didn't need fan across her cheek. They hadn't been close since he'd kissed her, and they'd had to overcome such an awkward few weeks._

 _How simple that issue seemed now._

 _"Because you're my friend," she said softly, and her voice cracked. She glanced down at their intertwined hands. "You're my best friend, and I love you, and there's no way I'll ever leave you behind amongst the monsters."_

 _She didn't think Simon heard her until he squeezed her fingers back. "I love you too, Clare."_

 _They stood, and Clary wrapped her scarf back round her neck. "What were you doing in that hotel, anyway?" Simon asked curiously. "I saw you go in, so I followed, and that's completely my fault, but. . . Why?"_

 _She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head - not at him; against the flow of everything she'd been trying to deal with, the sightings of Valentine in Idris and around the world, the alliances being formed, the amount of bartering she'd had to do just the get Simon out of that wretched place alive. So much for a young teenager to worry about, when other girls her age weren't concerned anything more than exams or the thought of the life looming ahead of them._

 _Her life wasn't looming ahead of her. She was living it, although she wasn't sure for how much longer._

 _"Nothing." She said, opening her eyes and forcing a smile. "Nothing important."_

 _His eyes shone as he squinted at her over his glasses. He frowned, then took them off, testing his eyesight without them._

 _When he was satisfied he wouldn't need them again, he removed them completely, folded the arms up, and slipped them into his pocket._

 _He threw them into the first rubbish bin they passed._

* * *

Idris, 2008

The Portal was a whirlwind of noise and activity, every sound and sight and smell from every moment in this dimension threatening to swallow her into an abyss of its own.

Clary released a breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding as her feet collided with solid ground on the other side. Her posture, and the posture of her escort, sagged slightly, but Maryse's vice-like grip on her arm didn't slacken as she strode, unfaltering, through the large arching halls of a building Clary presumed to be the Gard.

Not that she would know, seeing as she'd never visited the city both her parents had fought so hard to protect, albeit in their own, individual, ways.

Maryse cut her a sharp look as she stumbled slightly from the landing, and with a sharp jerk they twisted with the corridor as it veered to the left. She was yanked a little further down the next, until they stopped outside a seemingly random door, and Maryse knocked on it sharply. Clary could hear the footsteps of the rest of the Lightwoods fade behind as they went. . . wherever it was that witnesses went.

The door swung open, and a tall, thin, terrifying woman stood before them. Scraggly, colourless hair was pulled into a severe bun that tightened the wrinkles on her face to the point of pain. Her eyes seemed to be fixed in a permanent glare, and were a hard, blazing grey - like that of diamonds or glittering rocks. Her frown tightened when she saw Clary wriggling like a fish on a hook, and the shadows dripping down her brow seemed to thicken.

"Is this the girl?" She asked in a cool, authoritative voice that demanded obedience. She didn't wait for Maryse's answer when she stretched out a hand and grabbed Clary's other shoulder. She was beginning to feel like an actual criminal. "I can take her from here. Take your place in the stands."

Maryse's lips knotted at the blatant, dismissive order, but she acquiesced. Clary watched her go.

She turned back to the intimidating woman, only to find her watching her like a hawk. "My name is Imogen Herondale, the Inquisitor." She said. Her tone was flinty. "Come with me."

Clary was led through the room, which appeared to be an antechamber of sorts, and through another set of double doors. It had been dim in the rooms, and Clary blinked as she emerged into a well lit large hall. The noise hit her like a physical blow and she stumble, trying not to openly gawk at the amount of people present.

The Clave required _this many_ people just to have one of the few surviving Silent Brothers root through her head? Did this mean they'd already decided?

A shiver ran down her back.

She eyed to dais as Inquisitor Herondale led her up to it, and bit her lip as she kneeled. At once, a hush swept over the gathered audience as they turned her attention to her. She fought the urge to cringe at some of the stares that raked over her, both scornful and inquisitive. She swallowed as she eyed the spot where she presumed the Mortal Sword was _meant_ to be stood, but the space was glaringly - _accusingly_ \- empty.

Instead, she sensed more than heard the Silent Brother step up behind her, his steps undetectable, even as he walked round to stand directly between her and the audience, as though he was hoping to shelter her from their hateful gazes. But why would he? He was a Silent Brother; he was loyal to the Clave in blood and bone and body. Why would he regard her with anything but hatred, if he was capable of such a strong emotion?

She hadn't realised she'd closed her eyes and braced herself under she flinched as cold pale fingers tilted her chin up, until she was meeting his eyes - or rather, where the shadows of them were. _My name is Brother Zachariah_ , he said, and his mental voice was soothing, like he was talking to a spooked animal. _This won't hurt much. Please refrain from resisting, or you'll make it harder than it needs to be._

She nodded, and closed her eyes. Her hands subconsciously curled into fists.

Clary felt the intrusion as a drawing pressure against her mind. Immediately, colours began to flash behind her eyelids, coalescing into scenes, memories, things she'd rather forget. her head pounded.

She felt Brother Zachariah's ceaseless conquest pause briefly at the image of her brother and father, then whirled on through her life's story, through beatings and injuries and hugs and tears and escapades that proved _pointless_ in the end, because all they'd done was paint a _target_ on her back, and now she was being _hunted_ -

The pressure was withdrawn, and Clary loosed a ragged breath that was half sob as she blinked furiously in a futile attempt to keep the tears in. She slowly uncurled her fists, wincing as she extracted her nails from where they'd punched red crescents into her palms.

Well this was it. This was where she either was sentenced to death or had her Marks stripped, or where they decided to have mercy on a girl who'd technically done nothing wrong.

But the day the Clave looked past their own prejudices and looked at her without seeing _VALENTINE'S DAUGHTER_ stamped on her forehead, would be the day she would need to stop hiding. And she'd been hiding her entire life for a reason.

She kept her head bowed as the Silent Brother stepped away, even as the discontented murmurs of the Clave began to rise and fall like breaths. Her breathing quickened. It hadn't really hit her before, not whilst she'd pointedly spent the time in solitude not thinking about it, but a few metres away a Silent Brother was discussing the entire outcome of her life with the Consul whose mouth had a cruel twist, and the Inquisitor with a hostile expression, like it was any of their business. A few metres away, sat Jace whose gaze she could feel burning the crown of her head like some sort of fiery halo was perched on it. A few metres away lay a stele, just lying innocently on the floor as though someone had dropped it, and beyond that the open door.

She swallowed against the temptation. You couldn't pass through the wards in Alicante without permission, whether you were going in or out. There was no point in her running.

It would just make it hurt more, in the end.

When she finally deigned to glance up, she senses Jace's eyes snap to hers, but she made sure to avoid his gaze. She made a brief preliminary scan of the gathered Shadowhunters, most of whom weren't looking at her anymore, and swallowed, and looked back down again.

However, she jerked herself to attention when a second hush swept over them, and she turned her head to see the Consul - a dark haired man with a strong jaw - address the crowd.

"This trial has been postponed for reasons deemed too sensitive to share," he announced, and reverberations of unrest rippled through the crowd. Clary dared a quick glance at the Lightwoods, to see Isabelle's dark head lean over to ask Jace something. "We'll be resuming things tomorrow, and only members of the Clave involved in the investigation are permitted to attend."

A few outbursts of indignation came at that, but a wave of the Consul's hand had them silenced, Clary was grudgingly impressed; he had clearly earned their respect as a leader.

"Malachi-" came a question. Clary blinked to find it was quiet, stoic Alec who'd raised the complaint. "We can look after Clary in the mean-"

"We can arrange the accommodations, Alexander," the Consul - _Malachi -_ cut off smoothly. "That's enough," he said as Alec opened his mouth to protest, and promptly closed it again.

Clary's blood ran cold.

 _Malachi._

Was _this_ Malachi, the spy her father had bragged about having, in a high up place in the Clave? Was this the man whose leash he held with a few words and fanatic ideas?

 _Shit_.

Imogen Herondale's face was set and harsh as she turned to her after the Gard had cleared out. "Get up," she said, and though fear gnawed at Clary's gut just considering going with this man, she knew Imogen was not the right person to appeal to. "You'll be staying with him until Brother Zachariah can unravel whatever it was he found in your mind."

 _Unravel whatever it was he found?_ Clary sneaked a glance at the Nephilim in question, but his hood was up, and his face was cast in shadow. "But-"

"You will go with him, and we shall resume this tomorrow," Imogen reiterated, a brittle, icy rage hardening the edges of her voice.

Cowed, and hating herself for it, Clary nodded.

Malachi's grip was tight on her arm as he walked her down the street, although she shied away from him as much as possible. By the time they'd marched to a pleasant looking townhouse on one of the canals a few minutes walk away, her mouth had gone dry at the distinct sense that there was something wrong.

Nevertheless, she followed him into the house, and up the stairs, and into the spare bedroom. She didn't question any of these actions, sensing that her questions would not be appreciated.

She only heard the soft click of the lock because she was listening for it.

She only sensed the shadow at the window because she knew it would be there.

She only stood frozen because she was too terrified to brace herself.

Despite Clary's observations, she didn't have time to reach for the weapons that weren't there, or even draw breath to scream, before her brother's blow to the head came, swift and merciless, and she embraced darkness with the readiness of an old friend come to visit.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.**

 **I'm sorry. I know it's been a while. But I believe I know how to tie together all the loose ends now.**

 **So... what did you think?**


	22. To Be Wounded

**To Be Wounded**

 _Chapter song: Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine_

Idris, 2001

 _"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so sorry Clary," Jonathan sobbed. Her unconscious form didn't so much as twitch in recognition._

 _He hadn't meant to hurt her. But they'd been sparring in the training room, and she'd grown tired and given up and let him pin her. He hadn't realised how exhausted she was up until then, still lost in the thrum of his blood and the adrenaline pumping through his veins. So when she just slackened her posture and huffed, "I'm done," (as she could, as it was one of those rare occasions their father wasn't overseeing their training and he wasn't there to push her to her absolute limits), he didn't notice and took her surrender as a sign of weakness and attacked._

 _At the time he'd forgotten that they were using wooden swords instead of metal ones, but he was unbelievably grateful for it now. In the frenzy he'd lunged at her and tackled her to the ground with all the force he could muster. Her head had smacked the floor with a sound that was horribly appealing to his ears and she went limp, but he still brought the wooden shortsword round anyway, and drove it into her arm, into the artery there. When he was a child (and even now, when he could get away with it), he would go out hunting wild animals and cut them like this, just to watch them bleed out in agony for a few minutes._

 _The wooden blade, whilst blunt enough that it didn't achieve the neat slice he was hoping for, still scratched the blood vessels, and he watched with hungry eyes at the liquid that welled up and spilled over._ _But it wasn't enough to sate that raging bloodlust inside him, so he lifted the shortsword again, and made to bring it down._

 _In that moment, he forgot everything. He forgot who Clary was, what her death would mean, how terrified he still was of his father's wrath. There was just him and the blood and the demon inside him that demanded_ more, more, more.

 _But thankfully, though he was not at all thankful at the time, a shining throwing star whizzed towards him in that moment, aimed with the perfect trajectory to knock the weapon out of his hands. His hypersensitive state of mind detected the motion of the weapon as it curved through the air, and he threw himself out of its path, so it collided with the wall with a clunk._

 _He turned to the thrower with a snarl, Clary's unconscious body forgotten, and faced the man who'd just entered, sizing up his broad frame and multiple weapons like a lethal opponent._

"Jonathan!" _Barked a harsh voice, and instantly he was brought back to himself, head spinning, gaping at his father at just how completely he'd managed to lose control. "Step away from your sister."_

Sister. _The world clanged through him. Sister, sister, sister._ Clary.

 _He stepped back, and looked over at her, his bloodlust washed away by the vomit that jerked to the back of his throat._ Clary _._

 _Her crimson hair fell around her head, clumped together, until he couldn't tell what was blood and what wasn't. Her skin was deathly white, her body unmoving. He felt like retching even as the blood dripped down her arm where he'd cut her._

 _He moved forward, making a move to pull his stele free from his belt, but his father was already kneeling next to her, with healing runes being spattered over her arm and neck and face. Valentine lifted her and carried her into the infirmary, with a sharp order over his shoulder for Jonathan to stay where he was._

 _Now, Jonathan blinked, but the sight of all that blood lingered, even now that Clary had been cleaned up. He reached for her hand and brushed his thumb over his wrist, just to check that her pulse was still beating, that she was still alive._

 _"I'm so, so sorry, Clary. . ."_

* * *

Idris, 2008

Clary woke in a darkness so thick that at a first glance she didn't think she'd woken at all.

Her world tilted, but she flexed her fingers and gripped the stone beneath her. It was rough and cool and damp, and it scraped her cheek and elbow like the hand of a giant carrying her with little to no care. She sucked in a deep breath and it carried with it the scent of rot. Her eyes began to water, and she shoved through the fuzz of her brain to try to work out where she was, and why she was here.

 _Focus._

She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered. . . the trial, Brother Zachariah, Jonathan. . . darkness.

She swallowed as she realised she was in the exact situation she'd been aiming to avoid for the past four years.

Once her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she sat up and looked around. The cell she was in was dank and dingy, and fairly cramped. She could make out several trays heaped in the corner, covered in rotten food, and her stomach heaved when she remembered for a moment that however long she'd been out, she hadn't eaten since that morning in the Institute. If Valentine was sticking to his strict regime of three meals a day, what he'd always forced her to have to keep her strength at maximum capacity, then she'd been down here for two and a bit days. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it.

She didn't know how many hours it was before her brother came down with another meal stacked on a tray. He barely raised an eyebrow at her waking state, and tossed the tray so it skidded inside, some of the contents spilling over the sides.

"Good to see you, Clarissa." His voice held no emotion.

She spat at him.

He walked away without comment.

She shoved the tray aside and refused to touch it, despite the insistent gnawing at her stomach.

Clary was sleeping when she felt the first lash of pain, a tether that yanked her into consciousness. She opened her eyes blearily to see the glint of white hair above her. She let her father tear off her shirt and almost welcomed the shattering pain that descended with the whip, as it drew her out of her filth and grogginess completely, and cleared her throat enough for her to scream.

It continued for who knew how long, until it finally stopped, and the footsteps receded, leaving her bleeding on the floor. She wallowed there for hours, and almost cracked a smile when she remembered what Isabelle would say if she saw her now. " _Wallowing is for elephants, depressing people, and depressing elephants._ "

She started when she heard footsteps thundering down the hallway towards her, and when Jonathan unlocked the door and stepped into her cell, she scrambled back against the wall at the anger in his eyes, her heart racing to get away from him. The scabs on her back split and she flinched, and Jonathan stopped his approach.

"Clary," he said carefully. "I'm not here to hurt you."

She kept her eyes downcast, and shook her constantly, doing her best to drown out the pain in her back. She drew her knees up to her chest in an attempt to conceal her half-nakedness.

But he didn't attack her, just as he promised. He knelt down and placed rolls of bandages in the centre of the floor on a tray that kept them from getting infected by the filth of the floor. Then he got up and left.

An hour passed, and she remained curled in the foetal position. Two.

Finally, she reached out, to pick up the bandages and began to unravel them, and wind them round her chest and back. Then she got to the second to last round and froze.

Something was written on them, in faded lettering that was almost impossible to discern at a first glance, but with further study, she'd managed to decipher the message.

 _HE WILL BE AT LAKE LYN WITH THE CUP AND SWORD TWO NIGHTS FROM NOW, TO SUMMON RAZIEL. YOU NEED TO BE THERE TO STOP HIM._

 _YOUR FRIENDS ARE COMING FOR YOU._


	23. To Make A Deal

**To Make A Deal**

 _Chapter song: Dream by Imagine Dragons_

New York, 2008

 _"Go to Hell," Simon swore at all of them. He regretted it slightly when Isabelle blinked, a flicker of hurt shooting over her face, then it was gone and he conceded to his anger. "What sort of thing could possibly explain why you kept Clary locked up for days on then, then you come in here to say that you gave her a fair trial, locked her up in a house, but she disappeared within the night?" He was pacing now, feeling the pressure in his gums where his fangs threatened to slide out. "And you come in here and expect me to be calm?"_

 _"We never technically said 'We want you to be calm'," Isabelle observed, eyes glittering. She'd taken a small knife out of the sheathe at her waist a few minutes ago and was playing with it now. She looked slightly terrifying. "We just said we'd appreciate it."_

 _They were sitting in the Sanctuary of the New York Institute. Simon had been apprehensive to say the least when they'd asked to meet him there - least of all because Clary had told him once that Institutes were built on hallowed ground, so unholy undead beings such as vampires couldn't lay a foot there. He'd been in a frenzy these past few days, trying in vain to calm down a frantic Jocelyn, insisting that Clary was fine, that Jace was in the Institute and contacted him daily to assure him she was unharmed, that everything would be all right. Sometimes it had worked, but mostly the only thing holding her back from storming the Institute herself and borderline threatening the Lightwoods to let her daughter go was the delicate child she knew still needed her desperately, that would die if she got herself killed._

 _So Jocelyn had sat and seethed, never mollified, and had all but screeched at Simon on those daily visits to explain the updates, saying that she'd never been happy with Clary dating a Shadowhunter, that she'd been working against this for over a decade, that this would not end well._

 _Simon's unbeating heart had stopped when instead of sending him text updates on his friend's condition - Jace had never liked talking to him, and vice versa - he had asked Simon to meet him, Isabelle and Alec here, in the early hour before dawn. Apparently they'd just returned from Idris, and had only had time for a few hours sleep before launching into a longwinded detailed story, of which there was only one significant part:_

 _Clary was gone._

Gone _._

 _Disappeared off the face of the earth._

 _All he had to say to that was-_

"How?!"

 _Jace's voice was gruff and irritated, but he had a queer look to his face, and Simon had to remind himself for a moment that Jace loved Clary too. He was terrified too. "Well, if we knew that, don't you think we would have told you?"_

 _"I can't believe she did this." There was something like disgust in Isabelle's voice. "I mean, I saw how uncomfortable she was at the trial, but I never imagined she would just up and abandon us the way she did. She_ knows _she's innocent - why act guilty? Why put all of us under suspicion for helping her escape?"_

 _"I think it shows just how little you know her if you think she left on purpose," Simon said quietly. Isabelle looked as it he'd hit her, but he barrelled on. "It's as you said: Clary knows she's innocent. And she's reckless and stupid and doesn't think things through, but she's no coward. Even if she knew she was guilty, she wouldn't have run._

 _"And seriously? It shows just how naïve you are that you don't think she was kidnapped. She's_ Valentine's daughter _\- don't flinch like that; she can't help her parentage - she's got a fucking price on her head. There are lots of people who would want to kill her, lots of people who'd just want to use her ability to make runes, lots of people who'd turn her over to Valentine in a heartbeat, and even a few who would kill her just so Valentine doesn't get to her. But of all the possibilities, you want to believe she ran away?"_

 _Alec began, "Don't talk to my sister like-"_

 _"I'll talk to anyone however I want, and it's not just to Isabelle anyway. It's to all three of you. It's to the Clave. It's to the whole damn world._ Stop blaming Clarissa Morgenstern for something that wasn't her fault _."_

 _The name "Morgenstern" still felt foreign in his mouth, especially as in reference to Clary. But he stared them down, and said, "So we're going to help her get out-"_

 _"Who said anything about we?" Alec cut in, casting nervous glances at his siblings. "The Clave-"_

 _"Will do nothing," Simon finished. "And clearly you lot won't, either. So I'll do it myself." He stood from the chair, and marched out of the doors of the Sanctuary._

 _"Simon, wait! The sunlight-"_

 _He froze. But it was too late._

 _He blinked then turned towards where the sun stained the sky gold, and saw how he'd stepped directly into a patch of sunlight. He began hyperventilating - even though_ he didn't need to breathe _\- and shut his eyes. In, out, in , out, in out in out in out in out in out-_

 _Nothing came._

 _There was no blistering sensation creeping over his skin. There was no intense heat. There was no feeling of his limbs crumbling to ashes before the new day._

 _He stood in the sunlight, gaping at her intact body._

 _He turned, and saw the Lightwoods gaping too._

 _"Simon, you're-" Isabelle started to say, then swallowed. "You're alive."_

 _Jace didn't even have the decency to look mildly surprised at this new de development. "Great," he said nonchalantly, and received a scorching glare from his sister. "So this means we can get going right now then, instead of waiting until sunset?"_

* * *

Idris, 2008

A few hours later, they found themselves in a glade in the middle of Brocelind Forest in Idris, waiting for someone to show up and help them.

"Are you _sure_ we can trust him, Jace?" Simon asked for what felt like the billionth time, gnawing on his lower lip. Jace gave him a look that suggested he wished Simon didn't possess whatever strange power had allowed him to walk in the sunlight, and had disintegrated instead.

"I'm certain." Though his voice was cool and collected, his fists were clenched, the tendons straining over the knuckles. "You weren't there. You didn't see his face when Clary pulled that knife. If he was that terrified she was going to die, then I think he can be relied upon to help her now."

"That's providing Valentine wants to kill her. And you _think_?!" Simon prodded. "I've heard many bad things about Jonathan Morgenstern, both from Clary and from others in Downworld-"

"Well, good," said a voice. Simon jumped out of his skin. It was everything nightmares were made of, darkness and death and the promise of the destruction of all you held dear. How the teenager had crept up on them without Simon's vampire senses detecting his presence, he had no idea. It only terrified him further. "I'd hate to think that all my monstrous acts went uncredited."

Swallowing hard, even though his mouth no longer produced saliva, Simon turned.

His first thought was that though he was loathe to admit it, he could see the resemblance between Jocelyn and her demonic son. They both had the same long, slender hand, and lithe frames, and sharply angles faces. But that was where the similarities ended.

Jonathan's hair fell to his chin, and was the colourless shade of bleached thread. He had a straight nose, that was reminiscent of the shape of Clary's nose, but again, that was the only resemblance between them. Jonathan's eyes were black holes that seemed to gobble up all the light. His presence was as cold as ice - a far cry from the warmth of Jocelyn and Clary that could spark to fire at the slightest provocation. He was as cold as a land that had never seen the sun, and wouldn't for another million years. Only the faint pink flush across papery skin showed any colour; he could have easily been painted by Clary as a frozen wasteland.

Simon's terror mounted.

Jonathan cocked his head as he looked as him, like a shark might survey a dolphin - not a real threat, or prey, but a nuisance nonetheless. "It is odd," he drawled, "seeing all the expressions of terror on a humanoid face but not being able to hear the racing heartbeat or scent of fear. Vampires are so odd." Seemingly done with his observations, he turned to Jace, as though he'd pegged him as the leader in their group (Alec and Isabelle _were_ hovering around the edges of the glade, so that was probably an acute guess). "What did you want, Angel Boy?"

Jace gulped. Simon decided not to comment on the nickname.

"I want you to help us get Clary out."

Well, no beating about the bush then. Apparently Jace wasn't going for subtle.

Jonathan tilted his head; white hair fell in his face. "And why would I do that?"

His stare was piercing, but Jace didn't yield. Simon saw a flicker of admiration in Jonathan's gaze, but it was tempered by a hatred so profound Simon had to look away. He didn't have the courage to ask about it.

"Because you care about her just as much as we do, and you _know_ that Valentine will kill her once she outlives her usefulness."

"My father was angry when she left," Jonathan admitted, and somehow a knife found its way into his hands. Simon flinched, but all the older boy did was fiddle with it. He caught the smirk thrown at him, before the demon child turned his attention back to Jace. "But my sister's a powerful weapon in his arsenal, so long as she cooperates. Why on earth would he want to give that up?"

 _My father. My sister._ Even though Clary had told him her family situation months ago it was still jarring to hear this monster refer to her as his own flesh and blood so easily.

"Because she won't cooperate." Jace said blandly. Jonathan tilted his head again. "You and I both know that. She'll resist in every way she has, until she can find a way to end it. And in the meantime, your father's favourite methods of persuasion include the whip and the knife." Simon knew that Jace had hit the nerve he was aiming for when Jonathan's lips tightened almost imperceptibly. "And I don't think you like to see her in pain any more than I do."

"What makes you so sure of that?" The words were sharp though, the smooth tones stripped away to reveal the rawness beneath. That in itself was all the answer they needed, but Jace answered anyway.

"Because she's your sister. She's your flesh and blood, and you were raised alongside her for over ten years. Demon or not, you've come to care."

"What do you want me to do?" The fact that Jonathan changed the subject so blatantly, said enough about how much of what Jace had said was true. They explained the plan, and Jonathan nodded at the end. "Alright, then. I'll meet you here with Clary later tonight." He glanced behind him, demon senses no doubt picking up on something even Simon couldn't hear. "Now clear off, before someone finds you."

Jace, Isabelle and Alec did. Simon went to acquiesce, but in a movement to fast for even Simon to see, Jonathan had clamped a hand round his wrist. Simon stifled a scream; he was certain that any tighter, and the Morgenstern could easily shatter his bones. "Not you, vampire."

Jace didn't even look back to see how he would fare, but Isabelle lingered for a moment, before a motion with Simon's free hand assured her that he'd be fine without her. Only once he was gone did Jonathan release his wrist.

"I have a deal to make with you, and you alone." He said.

Simon forced himself to look up, into the face that was so unlike his friend's but so similar in all the ways that haunted him.

Very carefully, he said, "What do you need?"

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

 **So things are starting to come to a head now...**

 **What did you think? :)**


	24. To Dump A Truth

**To Dump A Truth**

 _Chapter song: Hallelujah by John Cale_

New York, 2008

 _"What did he want?" was the first thing Isabelle said when Simon caught up to them. He tripped over a tree root as he jogged towards her and hastily righted himself; months of vampire speed hadn't been able to cure his natural clumsiness, it seemed._

 _He glanced behind him, even though his ears detected no sounds, and he knew that Jonathan was long gone. "Nothing." He said, trying to believe his own words. The card was burning a hole in his pocket. "I'm not even sure what he was going on about."_

 _Isabelle's lips pinched in disapproval, but she didn't inquire further, which was a mercy in itself. "Come on," she said instead. "Magnus and the others are just waiting ahead."_

 _They made it back to the New York Institute Sanctuary without hindrance, where he waved goodbye to the Lightwoods and headed off. Once he'd passed the threshold of the Institute grounds, he tugged his phone out of his pocket, and tapped the button a few times to get it working; apparently Idris didn't agree with modern day technology._

 _But then he saw the number of missed calls he had and froze. Someone bumped into him from behind, muttering something irritable under their breath._

 _Simon just stared._

 _Jocelyn had phoned him twenty eight times whilst he was in Idris, before she'd given up about half an hour ago._

 _His hands trembled as he hit the call button again and again and again. It went to voicemail every time. Simon's chest heaved with breaths he didn't need._

 _He was running before he registered it._

 _It was a long way to Clary's apartment, but vampire speed did its job and in just under five minutes he found himself shooting up the spiralling stairs in the apartment building. His fist collided with the door and he was half sure he would permanently dent the wood as he pounded it. He shouted, then fell silent and listened intently, but Addie's soft cries were the only thing he could hear. He jostled the doorknob, hoping with some desperate plea that it would be unlocked._

 _It wasn't, but that turned out not to matter as he managed to break the door and kick it in anyway._

 _As soon as he crossed the threshold he froze._

 _The place was in disarray. Jocelyn's neatly folded blankets were strewn all over the floor and her prettily painted drawers smashed, their contents scattered. Knives and forks from the kitchen had been thrown everywhere, like a large figure had rifled through them in haste._

 _Simon took all of this in, then his gaze fell on Jocelyn, and the floor fell away._

 _She lay motionless on the ground, one arm crushed under her torso, the other one flung out like she'd been using her own body as a shield for her infant daughter, who lay sobbing in her crib behind her. Her mess of crimson hair obscured the source, but Simon wasn't fooled; he could smell the blood. Her eyes were opened and glassy._

 _He bit down on his own fist to stifle the screams, and tried to tame the shudders racking his body._

 _Instead he kneeled next to her body, and tentatively took her wrist. Her skin was cold, too cold - he wasn't bothered by the cold anymore, but he knew it wasn't healthy for her to be this cold - and as he pressed his thumb to the vein at the base of her hand, he felt no pulse._

 _If he had been able to cry, he would have._

 _Jocelyn was dead._

 _He looked around, trying to focus on anything but the sight of her corpse. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened: Valentine had attacked the apartment, torn the place apart looking for something, and had either intentionally or accidentally killed Jocelyn. Simon took a moment to wonder how Addie was still breathing, but then he dismissed the thought, thanking God she was._

 _He stood, and stepped towards the crib. Addie's feeble cries died down for a moment as she stared at him, and Simon contained an involuntary flinch. Her eyes were so like Luke's, and he couldn't bear to the judgement in them, the_ You should have gotten here sooner _there._

 _He picked her up, but upon contact with his skin Addie started crying even more, as it sucked all the warmth from hers. He gritted his teeth, and instead carried her out of there and onto the landing, where he sat on the stairs with Clary's sister on his knee supported with one hand, whilst his other hand was put to use calling Luke and breaking the news._

* * *

Idris, 2008

Clary was dreaming, she was sure, when her brother visited her again. He unlocked the door, snuck in, and lifted her up, touch careful of the whip marks still on her back, and carried her out of there. It was annoyingly vivid though; her back still twinged, her eyelids still fluttered, the noise of his near-silent footsteps was still a hammer blow to her head. She blacked out before they reached the surface.

When she came to, she was under an emerald canopy with filtered sunlight searing her eyes shut. She heard far away voices murmuring, sharp words that shot straight through the mush inside her skull, and she flinched when Jace said, "Clary!" a bit too loudly. She blacked out again.

She was regrettably yanked back to the world of mortals by the feel of coarse blankets against her skin. Luke was conversing in hushed tones in the corner of her room, and she gritted her teeth as she hauled herself up onto his elbows. Her matted hair swung around her face with the movement, and she couldn't stifle a groan at the pain that lanced up her back.

Luke looked up then; his eyes went wide behind his glasses. "Clary!" He cut whatever conversation he was having short and rushed over to her. "Oh, you're alive. Thank the Angel. You're alive." He repeated the sentences to himself a few more times, hands fluttering at his sides like he wasn't quite sure what to do with them. "Lie down, you'll hurt yourself. Jace applied a few iratzes but they weren't working for some reason I think it might have been to do with the whip Valentine used and we could only hope that the little help they were would have an effect. You're mainly healed but just in case you break the scabs. . ."

Clary acquiesced, but as she settled back she studied him intently. There were dark bags under his eyes, which were swollen and red. His clothes hung limp on his frame, and she wrinkled her nose; they stank.

He looked awful.

She tried to divert her attention from that fact with the question, "Where's Mum? And Addie?" She looked around for the first time, as though she thought they'd materialise, noticing what looked like an Institute bedroom.

Luke swallowed, and took the seat next to her. He dumped his words at his feet like a bag of stones he'd been forced to carry for miles in a relay, and was now almost reluctant to pass on to the next runner. "Valentine attacked the apartment."

It was suddenly very hard to breathe.

Luke used his index finger to push his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. It ached to see such a familiar gesture Clary remembered him using when reading, or when trying to work out why his daughter was crying.

"Jocelyn was killed."

The world froze from an instant, like that horrifying moment when you're walking down steps and you miss one, so you're left suspended in the air for a fraction of a second. Her hands flexed in the bed sheets and she twisted spirals into them. Her fingers fastened round the resulting column like it was Valentine's neck, and she squeezed it tightly.

Luke hadn't moved, or even breathed, since he spoke the words. Se tried to open her mouth, but the information had rammed itself down her throat and now she couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, the information was leaking into her ribcage now, and she felt her heart stutter and falter-

"I-"

That single word was all she could get out around the blockage.

But Luke nodded.

"I know." Silence, then, "If you want, we can postpone the funeral for a few days to give you time to recover."

"No." Clary was certain on that. "Let's postpone the date, but I don't need time to recover. Valentine will be at Lake Lyn to summon Raziel tomorrow night, and we have to be there to stop him when he is." Her heart guttered. "For Mum. And all the other innocent souls he'll kill."

* * *

 **...please don't kill me.**


	25. To Fail Another

**To Fail Another**

 _Chapter song: Pompeii by Bastille_

New York, 2008

 _"You know that no one but us is going to believe you on this." Alec said, a statement of fact, not a threat or promise. Clary nodded in response. The look they exchanged was a weighted, solemn thing; there were no smiles here._

 _They'd met in Magnus's apartment to discuss what their next steps would be, having rejected the idea of using the Institute so Simon could join them. The vampire was sprawled across one of the neon coloured sofas, Isabelle sitting stiff backed next to him. Jace, Alec and Magnus sat on the one opposite, and Clary was sitting cross legged on the floor, leaning against a beanbag._

 _"I know. But we only need a few people to go to Lake Lyn and help stop him from summoning the Angel; he'll not want anyone there to see it. Knowing Valentine, he'd go to meet Raziel alone, rather than have someone come along with him, so he can delude himself that the Angel's attention is fixed on him and him alone. He's doing it to be told he's right, and that all the glory in the world is his; he won't want to share that."_

 _Jace shifted uncomfortably as she said that, and she recounted how odd it must be to hear the person he'd once looked up to described in such familiar terms that seemed foreign to him._

 _"And if he manages to summon Raziel?" Izzy cut in then, dark eyes flashing like the light off the small blade she played with. "What then?"_

 _Clary swallowed. The pocket of her jacket where rested the item Simon had slipped her just before the meeting seemed to suddenly grow heavy. "Let's hope we get there before that happens."_

 _"Valentine definitely won't be taking anyone with him? Not even for protection?" Isabelle continued. The fingers fiddling with the knife stilled. "Not even your brother?"_

 _Clary shook her head. "No. Definitely not. Without a doubt." He wouldn't want to show an angel the demon he'd created. "He'll be alone."_

 _"About that," Magnus cut in smoothly, his face twisted into something that looked like concern. "Luke called earlier. Four Downworlders were found dead this morning: a faerie, a werewolf, a warlock, and a vampire. They were all dumped in a heap in one place, and they were all drained of blood completely."_

 _Clary felt her face pale even as Jace asked, "What does that have to do with anything?"_

 _"The Ritual of Infernal Conversion." Magnus explained. "Clary and I had discussed this as a possibility, and now it seems that's the path he's taking. You see," he said after a short pause, "the Mortal Sword, as it is right now, is useless to him. All it does is make people tell the truth; he doesn't need it. He has torture, and Shadowhunters fanatically loyal to his cause who would see lying to him as a cardinal sin. But the Ritual of Infernal Conversion," he continued, "was created hundreds of years ago, and was created to give the Sword the ability to summon demons._

 _"Not just one by one," Magnus said, cutting off Jace as he opened his mouth, his scepticism a living, writhing thing. "But hordes of them, all at once. He can drag them from the capital of Hell itself, and so long as he calls, they'll follow. He could bring veritable armies through, endless amounts, and then some. And the Ritual requires," he took a breath; for the first time Clary realised his hands were shaking._

 _She was so used to Magnus's chipper, unflappable personality that she'd forgotten he was human too._

 _(Well, half human.)_

 _"The Ritual requires," he tried again, "four Downworlders - one of each kind. And the blade has to be stewed or soaked or doused or whatever in each one's blood." He swallowed. "The corpses found were at least four days old. I'd guess he's already done it."_

 _Silence struck like a bell. "Ah."_

 _"Indeed. Which means," Magnus's cat-like eyes held none of their usual sparkle as he surveyed them all. "We'll need a_ few _more reinforcements than we realised."_

* * *

New York, 2008

It was oddly comforting, hearing Luke's humming drifting through the door of her room from the kitchen. It filled an echoing silence that had been left since her mother died. A cheerful sound, it fitted the scent of paint and canvas that still lingered in the apartment, and if she wasn't thinking, she could almost imagine that the events of the past weeks hadn't occurred at all. When she stepped out of her room, though, the muted look of devastation that still lingered on the werewolf's face was enough to bring that happy fantasy crashing down around her.

In her cradle in the centre of the room, Addie woke, and began to cry.

Luke started, and dropped the plate he'd been washing into the sink, but before he could dry his hands, Clary was halfway across the room and gently lifting her baby sister into her arms. She rocked her back and forth, softly murmuring a lullaby under her breath, until the child had exhaled a long sigh, and drifted back to sleep.

She gently laid her back down and turned towards Luke, who watched them with wistful eyes.

"You know, I asked her to marry me," he said quietly, eyes fixated on his sleeping daughter. Then they shifted out of focus, like he wasn't seeing her, necessarily, just what she stood for. "Months ago. I knew war was coming, and I knew there was large chance no all of us would survive it. I wanted to be able to help keep you all safe, and officially call myself your stepfather. I wanted that sort of security.

"But Jocel-" he choked on the name. "But _she_ said no. She said she didn't want to rush it, that if we ever got married, she wanted it to be in our own time, not on anyone else's. And certainly not on the time of a war Valentine brought.

"That was her final argument," he finished. "That she was still technically married to Valentine, and that she didn't want to bring any legal trouble crashing down on my head. Nor did she want any more of a target painted on mine and our daughter's backs, because you know his response to the wedding would be to eliminate us.

"So we were never married. And I let it go like that, because I loved her, and respected her wishes. I still have the engagement ring, though. It's in a drawer somewhere. And now she'll never get to wear it."

All of a sudden, he blinked violently, and his voice cracked as he wiped at his face, saying, "I'm sorry. I know I'm meant to be strong right now, amidst all the complete and utter _shit_ that's going down-"

"Luke!" She mock scolded, because she didn't know what else to do.

He barked a short laugh, but it was quickly drowned away by the tears that started fresh. "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I just wish-" His breath caught. "I just wish I could do something. I wish I could be of some use to you and Addie now she's dead, because even if I failed her, I wish I wasn't failing you."

"You didn't fail her-"

" _Simon_ was the one who found her!" He shouted. Addie woke up and started crying again. "I should have been here, but even if I wasn't, I wasn't even there to find her! I had to receive a phone call from him saying that he'd found her _dead_ , and Addie for some reason untouched!"

Clary picked up her little sister and tried to bounce her around a bit to see if she was willing to sleep again. "That doesn't mean-"

"I checked my phone," Luke continued, and the dramatic drop in volume was what caught her attention more than anything else. His voice wasn't angry, it was just weary - weary and heartbroken. "I checked my phone, after I finished the call with Simon, and I saw three missed calls from her. _Three_. Whilst I was busy organising the pack and trying to dispatch them to find you, I missed the chance to possibly save her life. And now it's my fault she's dead. I failed her."

"You didn't fail her," Clary reiterated, and this time her voice didn't shake. She placed her sister back in the cradle, and swaddled her in blankets, before turning back to her would-be stepfather. "I'm the one who was stupid enough to go missing for weeks on end, without so much as a goodbye. I'm the one you were searching for. It's my fault."

"It is _not_ your fault-"

" _Then it's not yours either!"_

She took a deep breath, and was surprised to see Luke had shrunk back at her outburst. She tried for a reasonable tone. "There is no point in assigning blame. It doesn't change what happened. As it is, we need to stop regretting the dead, and start working to make sure _all_ of us don't end up dead."

Luke closed his eyes, pinched his nose, took a deep breath. Then he opened them and nodded. "Alright. You're right. What can I do?"

"Actually. . ." She trailed off, for a moment, but seeing she'd already peaked his interest, she sighed and admitted. "Magnus was wondering if you could help us raise a force to fight off the demons we think Valentine is going to summon at Lake Lyn tonight."

He brow creased as she explained it to him. Once she'd finished, all he said was "I'll see what I can do." He made for the door, paused to kiss Addie on the forehead briefly, then said to her as he opened the door, "I'll be back in a few hours," then slammed the door shut.

In the resounding silence that followed, the weight of all the secrets she kept seemed to crush down on her. She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and drew out a rectangle of folded card. She unfolded it, and slapped it down on the kitchen counter. It was a tarot card - the Ace of Cups.

Addie's pale blue eyes had opened, and were watching it with a sort of fixated fascination.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Clary snapped, then wondered when she'd become so paranoid.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

 **What did you think?**


	26. To Be Great

**To Be Great**

 _Chapter Song: Bird Set Free by Sia_

Idris, 2008

 _"It's time, Jonathan," Valentine said gravely, looking out the window of the study to the setting sun beyond. "If your sister refuses to be here in our hour of greatness, then we have to act now, before she recovers and comes to try and thwart us. It's unlikely she would succeed, but it would be irksome. It'll be easier if we can face her again and for her to apologise for running away once she realises she was in the wrong."_

 _It was an interesting way of putting it, Jonathan thought. Our hour of greatness. Not only was it solely Valentine's, but Jonathan doubted it was all that great, nor, if it succeeded, would it only last for an hour._

 _He was slightly surprised that his father hadn't clocked onto the fact that it was him who'd helped Clary escape, but only slightly. After all, for all that Valentine was intelligent, his son was more so. There was no way he'd have gotten caught._

 _"Now," Valentine continued, shuffling through his pages and pages of notes. He paused for a moment to run a finger down one. It was an old one, that had been written before Jonathan was born, that detailed the advantages and disadvantages of feeding an unborn baby demon blood. And sure enough, inked there in his father's meticulous handwriting, were the words 'Child can take down Alicante's wards'. "You know what I need you to do. It would be best if I give them a taste of what to expect if they refuse to concede to my demands. That is, if the Angel's word doesn't convince them."_

 _Jonathan resisted the urge to snort._

 _His father clapped him on the shoulder, hastily withdrew his hand, then said, "Once you've taken down the wards, meet me here. I need you to keep the Circle in check whilst I summon Raziel."_

 _He didn't want to show the Angel his abomination, more like. But Jonathan swallowed the twinge of pain at the thought - he'd always known how his father felt; the unwillingness to touch him was evidence enough - and simply said, "No."_

 _Valentine, who'd begun to turn away, stilled. "What?" His voice dared Jonathan to say it again._

 _The boy crossed his arms across his chest. "No." He repeated. "I won't. I don't want to."_

 _That shark-eyed gaze turned murderous. "Yes, you will."_

 _Jonathan quicker an eyebrow, and let a cruel smile rise to his lips. "What will you do? Kill me? Force me? Threaten me?" He shook his head, a dark laugh emanating from his throat. "I'd like to see you try, Father, but perhaps the Angel would prefer to see you alive when you summon him, rather than your paraded corpse. Although I'm sure Clarissa would like the latter."_

 _His father's teeth were gritted now. "We have worked towards this, Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern, for years. I will not let you ruin it now."_

 _Jonathan leaned forward, until their noses were inches apart. He'd always known he was taller than his father, but it had never been as obvious as it was now. "Who are you to stop me?" He asked._

 _He unsheathed the dagger on his waist, and threw it down on the desk. "I'm done. I'm done being treated like a weapon for you to utilise when necessary, but to shy away from any other time. I'm done with your worthless cause, and I am done with you." He drew the hood of his gear over his head. "Don't come looking for me, Father, or you might find yourself blinded before you see me."_

 _"Jonathan-" Valentine started to say, but he never got the chance. His son was gone by the time he got past the first syllable._

* * *

New York, 2008

"The Portal's ready," Magnus informed her, his brow creased with worry. He looked at Clary, then opened his mouth like he was about to say something - no doubt talk her out of it - but she gave him a stern look, and he conceded. Conceding was never a part of Magnus's nature, but he knew that good ideas weren't a part of Clary's either, so he let her do what she needed to do.

"Are you sure you don't want anyone to come with you?" He asked again. She just smiled at him and shook her head, fingers absently running over the myriad of blades on her person. "Not even Jace?"

Her face dropped at that. "No," she said, and her voice was curiously hard. It struck Magnus that this was the Clary who'd grown up in her father's company, and had learned to shield her thoughts and fears behind a mask of steel. This was Clarissa, and she struck first, asked questions later. "My fath- Valentine would just kill them for daring to interrupt his plans. He wants me alive, so he won't be aiming for anything fatal, but I don't really know how he feels about Jace. Nor do I know how Jace will react to seeing the man he thought was his father for the first time in years."

Magnus felt his silence stretch, until he said with mournful observation, "You've grown too wise, Clary."

"I know," she whispered in return. It was the last crack in her mask before she sealed it up again, but Magnus could've sworn he saw a whisper of tears in her eyes.

"Wish me luck," she said instead, then she stepped into the Portal and the swirling mess beyond.

* * *

Idris, 2008

Clary had banked on everything that could possibly happen. She'd reviewed everything she remembered of her father and his tactics, had ruthlessly quizzed herself on his favourite choice of weapon, and even borrowed some dusty old books from Magnus that detailed the Ritual of Infernal Conversion, and the summoning of the angel. She'd debated for hours over whether he would bring Jonathan with him, and eventually concluded that no, he wouldn't; he wouldn't want to show his demon son to a heavenly being. She'd debated what gear he might wear, what time he'd carry out the ritual, and how quickly. Everything, anything, that could grant her a loophole with which to take Valentine by the neck and hang him.

Even so, she'd stupidly stupidly _stupidly_ not realised that he would employ wards to protect him as he worked.

The first ward she encountered was like colliding with the wall Jonathan had thrown her at all over again. She felt her skull crack against it, even though it _wasn't actually a physical thing_ , and her eyes rolled back in her head. She almost passed out from the pain.

The next ward shot a sense of nausea right through to her stomach, so when she hit the shores of Lake Lyn she promptly retched all over the silvery sand. The grains and chunks of vomit scratched against her knees. She bent over double, hugging her stomach.

The final ward shot through her head instead. She had to shut her eyes as her brain spun, images of times best forgotten flashing through her mind, even as the scarlet haze that had originally appeared began to dissipate.

She felt so awful that she almost didn't notice as strong hands wrenched her own begin her back and carved a rune in them. The stele's burning touch graced her lower back too, as well as another on her collar bone. The footsteps moved round her so the person was standing in front of her, and began to methodically remove the several bands of weapons that encircled her frame.

Her head cleared as she felt the power of an _iratze_ seep through her body, and for an instant she looked up to meet her father's shark-like gaze. His lips pressed into a long thin line.

"I'm sorry for the pain, Clarissa," he said, in that carefully controlled voice he'd always used when she was a child. He stepped back, and she noticed a ring of runes inscribed in the sand behind him. "I set up the wards for any unwanted intruders, not to incapacitate my own children. But you can watch me summon the Angel just as easily from there." He waved at her hands, and dozens of blades, now lying useless in the sand quite a distance away from her. "This is just a precaution, until I know where you stand." He tilted his head. "Where do you stand?"

She found her tongue again, and spat, "Sure as _hell_ not with you." She tested her hands again and cursed; he'd used a rune to bind them together. Not to mention the pins and needles in her legs must be a side effect of the rune carved into her tail bone. She racked her bran for all the Marks she'd studied over the years, and recalled: This particular one immobilised the body below wherever it was drawn. She cursed again; that must be why her legs were out of use.

"Don't curse," he chided idly, eyes flashing as he inspected the sword balanced in his massive hand. It was the Mortal Sword, she realised with a jolt. Then he turned towards her, and the look on his face was far more terrifying than any weapon he could wield. "And don't choose a side before you know all the facts."

Her voice cracked as she said, "All the facts? What _facts_ are there, other than your twisted opinions?"

Valentine gave a small sigh, like a her resistance was somehow a disappointment to him. "I only aimed for greatness. Not just for myself, but for you too. You and your brother, and your- and Jace." She scoffed, but he continued before she could get in edgewise. "And I succeeded.

"Look at you. You're one of the greatest Shadowhunters alive, teenager or not. You have the Angel's blessing running through your veins. You _and_ Jace. And Jonathan. . ." His voice guttered at that. "Jonathan was never meant to be a great person. He was meant to be a great weapon. And he is."

"You're wrong," she said. "He's not a great weapon. You don't control him; no one does. And he's not a great person. He's a _good_ person."

"Which is preferable?" Valentine mused, inspecting the Mortal Sword again. The evening sunset rippled off it, like heavenly fire. Dark splotches decorated the metal. Dried blood. "To have your hands clean, and intentions pure - neither of which your brother has anyway, I might point out - or to be able to say that you saved all that you hold dear, and that you may have slaughtered and sinned for it, but at least you did it?" He lowered the point of the sword into the sand. "And I have. Saved all that I hold dear. I saved your mother from depression after she had Jonathan, by giving her you. I saved Jonathan from hatred and alienation by hiding him away and giving him a loving father and sister to make up for the mother he lost." He looked up to meet her eye then; for whatever reason, she couldn't look away. "I saved you, or I almost did, from the poisonous ideas of your Downworlder _friends_." He sneered the word.

"They are not-"

"Downworlders are a plague, Clarissa." There was an exhausted irritation to his voice, and if Clary let herself, she could imagine she was five years old again, being scolded for questioning the most basic of concepts. _Downworlders, demons - anything_ other _is wrong, wrong, wrong, Clarissa. Clary. Why can't you see that?_ "They are borne of demons, and they will return to their demon ways one day. Shadowhunters must be ready to defend the world on that day."

"Luke, Maia, Magnus, _Simon_ -"

"Ah, yes. Them." He said the words on an exhale of breath. "You do know I'm going to kill them don't you? I've already sent Pangborn to get the job done."

Her heart stopped. "What?" _Stupid stupid stupid coming here alone of course he would do this of course everyone's going to die now because of you. Stupid stupid girl._

"Well, I can't have them hurting you anymore, can I? You're my daughter; I love you. I don't like to see you hurt, Clary."

 _And yet you're the reason I'm hurt. You're the reason I've always been hurt. Every scratch, every scrape, every emotional or physical blow, was down to your so-called affection._

She had come here prepared for the pain that would come when her father told her he hated her. She had not prepared for the pain that came when he told her he loved her.

"You belong with us. We'll be a family again. You, Jocelyn, me, Jace, and Jonathan, once he comes around." He muttered the last words darkly, and she wondered what her brother had done. Despite it all, she felt a twinge of pride. "Do you remember what Jonathan would say whenever he lost control? He said you belonged to him. Of course, it's not quite true in the way that he meant it," he admitted, disgust evident in his voice, "but it's a variation of the truth. It always terrified you, but it's the truth. You and Jace and Jonathan are the perfect team, and I your leader. Even that half-breed sister of yours could have a place here. She's still alive isn't she? You love her, don't you?"

 _Yes, she's alive. Unlike some people._ "You killed Mum."

They were perhaps the only words she'd said this evening - possibly ever - that he'd truly taken note of. He took a sharp gasp and asked, "What?"

Clary, feeling suddenly empowered, spat the words at him, even as tears flooded her cheeks. "She's dead; Luke told me. He said she was found dead on the floor after you broke into the apartment to steal the Mortal Cup. That her corpse was crumpled in front of Addie's crib, like she'd defended her with her dying breath."

For the first time in her life, she saw her father speechless. "I didn't know. I didn't know. I thought I'd just knocked her out." He swallowed. "I didn't touch the creature because she was so adamant on protecting it. I wanted to give her that respect at least."

 _Liar. You probably just wanted a chance to win back her love, and realised she would never forgive you if you killed Adele. You're nothing but a liar_.

He turned back to the lake, then. "Well, her loss won't be in vain." He said, more to himself than to Clary. "I'll still honour her memory." And then he threw the Mortal Sword into the lake.

Clary gasped as it splashed. The action had been so sudden, and now things were set in motion she wasn't sure she could control.

"You know, I needed blood for this. Shadowhunter blood." He wrinkled his nose. "What a waste of life. He had so much potential, too. He could've become almost as strong a warrior as his adoptive brother if he was raised right." He sighed, "But alas, he had other uses. Now his parents will know what happens to those who fail me."

Her mouth went dry. "Who was it?" When her father didn't respond, she asked again. " _Who was it, Valentine?"_

"That really is an awful habit you've picked up in your new. . . household. Please stop. Calling your parents by their first names is disrespectful." He turned then, and looked her in the eye as he said his next words. "It was Max Lightwood."

It felt like someone had sunk a blade into her heart. _Max._ She'd never met him, but she remembered how much the Lightwoods adored him, the way Jace would smile whenever he was mentioned, the myriad of photos of him littered about the Institute. She felt tears prick her eyes, and looked away. Valentine did not approve of crying.

Her father's expression was oddly mournful, though. "You see, Clarissa?" He asked. "This is the price of disobedience."

She couldn't speak. She wasn't sure she was breathing.

Valentine glanced up at the sky. "It's getting late. If the wards haven't been taken down yet, I suppose we'd better get a move on. We don't have the luxury of a battle to distract the Clave."

He began chanting, stepping backwards into the ring of scratched runes she'd seen earlier.

Clary held her breath as the Mortal Sword spun though the air and dropped into the lake, elegant as a falling star, and the resulting splash formed a pillar of water reaching up to the heavens.

She heard her father's reverent whisper, and the truth of the situation struck her like a hammer blow. So much hung on that one word; the promise of hopes and fears alike being birthed by a single moment.

"Raziel," he said.


	27. To Be Good

**To Be Good**

 _Chapter song: Control by Halsey_

Idris, 2007

 _Jonathan's mouth was dry, but he made sure his heartbeat stayed level, lest Lilith hear it and begin to suspect._

 _"I need adamas," he said, feeling every part of his being sharpen until his focus was a razor. "I plan to make an alternate Mortal Cup. A demonic one." He was shivering, he realised. It was such a human thing it caught him off guard for a moment. He hoped she would put it down to excitement. "If my predictions are correct, a Cup of adamas, containing demon blood instead of angel blood, would upon drinking from it transform a Shadowhunter or mundane into a vessel, an empty shell, that lives only to serve me. I can use them to attack the Clave. Once the Clave is in shambles, angelic Shadowhunters wiped out, they won't be around to stop the demon invasions, and the mundanes will be easy prey."_

 _Lilith raised an eyebrow. "And all you need to do all that," she said slowly, "is adamas?" He nodded, and she smiled. "Then I suppose I can tell you where to find it." She listed off an address: a demon's nest, somewhere in Prague. "Summon me again when you need blood."_

 _She disappeared, and he let himself breathe again. So long as she was glut on the promise of power - and victory, and, more importantly_ revenge _\- she wouldn't be expending useless energy into interfering with what actually happened. He ran the address over in his head, and twisted round his middle finger the silver ring he'd stolen from his father. He took a deep breath._

 _He'd need to contact Sister Magdalena. And present her with a_ suitable _reason not to tattle on him._

* * *

Idris, 2008

Her heart was made of knots, and some invisible hand kept pulling them tighter. She half-wanted to look away from the sight she was sure was coming, but her eyes were glued to the scene. She resented that she'd be there for Valentine to gloat to.

But the heavenly fire and light she half-expected to blossom in front of them never came.

The splash caused by the Mortal Sword fell down again until, only a few ripples remained where the Sword had been thrown. Valentine still stood ready, braced for victory, like some saint facing his benediction. But the Angel had always been depicted as a great golden being, and the only gold was the reflection of the sinking sun on Lake Lyn.

Nothing was happening, she realised. And Valentine, in his arrogance, and complete and utter conviction, didn't see that.

Clary's heartbeat sped up. She eyed her weapons, and her stele, lying a few feet away from her in the sand. Her breath caught as she tried to shuffle closer to it. Pain flared in her wrists and her tailbone, and she hissed.

Her chest tightened as she glanced at Valentine. His attention was still fixed on the lake, with no regard for his daughter behind him. But he was beginning to shift where he stood, and Clary could feel his rising anger the way she felt a storm coming.

She shuffled closer. This time she couldn't contain her cry and it tore out in a puff of breath. A tiny exclamation really, but it had all her muscles tensing impossibly tight. It felt like being undone when she relaxed again. Her father hadn't heard it.

 _One more_. She tried again, this time prepared for the pain, and biting her lip to keep from making a sound. There was the unmistakable tang of blood on her tongue as she reached with bound hands for the stele that winked dully in the evening light. It felt like it was mocking her.

She scrabbled in the sand for a moment to hold it, then clenched so hard she thought she might snap it. She twisted her hands to try and draw over the rune on her wrists, but pain barrelled through them, and a scream built in her throat. She scrunched her eyes against the tears welling in them. A sigh sprang out of her as her wrists snapped free.

She reached for the dagger nearest to her, but a voice stopped her. Even Valentine stopped his vigil to whip his head round and gape.

"Don't bother, Clary," her brother said, approaching on soft, silent feet. She wasn't even sure the grains of sand moved underfoot as he walked. "It won't help anything." He eyed Valentine coolly, and her father, to Clary's satisfaction, looked scared. "There's nothing you need to help."

"What," her father growled, "are you doing here, boy?"

"Boy, now, is it? And here I was thinking you were actually afraid of me." Valentine glanced over his shoulder at the lake; it was a quick gesture, but Jonathan caught it. "Your angel - _Raziel_ \- isn't coming, Father. Haven't you worked it out by now?" He took a step forwards; he was at least two metres away from the older man, but Valentine shrank back anyway. "You _lost._

"Did you really believe me, Father, when I told you that I'd convinced Clary to take the Cup out of the tarot card you recovered from Jocelyn? Were you that arrogant, that dismissive of your children, that you failed to register that Clary would _never_ do that?" He shook his head in disgust. "I made my own copy of the Mortal Cup, made with adamas and gold, a perfect replica. Ages ago now. Because _I knew this day would come_ , when I'd have to trick you. And _you fell for it_."

He glanced over at Clary, who'd drawn over the rune on her tailbone, and begun to stand on functional, albeit wobbly, legs. "I gave the real Cup, still in the tarot card, to Clary's vampire friend when I helped her escape." His voice was louder now, and clearer. It rang out over the lake. "You were none the wiser."

"I have it now," Clary said, her voice cracking. She'd been so scared. So scared that the card Simon had given her wasn't the right one, so scared that Jonathan was secretly with Valentine, so scared that the Angel would come when Valentine summoned him, that this had all been an elaborate ploy to break her even more.

The paper was a brand in her pocket, and her fingers shook as she took it out and unfolded it. The thick gold paint on the card shone like it had a light of its own, and the rubies and suns depicted on the sides seemed to shimmer. The sight of the unfamiliar brush strokes in such a familiar painting made her chest ache for the mother she'd lost, but she forced herself to look away, to fix her eyes on her father.

He looked like a man who'd been wandering in the desert for years, and had turned away from yet another mirage to see water right in front of him. He was far too thirsty to consider that what he was seeing might just be another illusion.

Quicker than he could think, she whipped out her stele and drew the heat rune on the back on the paper. It went up in flames faster than a match to oil. Valentine let out a horrified, but it was swiftly cut off by the whistle of a throwing star, and an odd gurgling sound as the weapon found purchase in his throat. Blood bubbled up like a crimson faucet, and she had to glance away - at Jonathan, whose face was unreadable as always - as the man died. It was an oddly quiet and anticlimactic way for such a powerful man to go.

She suddenly felt tired. So very tired. And Luke and Simon and Maia and Magnus were still in danger. She needed to save them. Magnus and Simon were at Magnus's apartment waiting for her return and Maia was at the pack headquarters when Clary spoke to her on the phone that afternoon and Luke was looking after Addie-

A burning licked at her fingertips; she glanced down with a hiss. She was still holding the tarot card.

With a clenched jaw, and a muttered "Good riddance", she released it to be carried by the wind, far far away. Smoke trailed behind it like shadow as she watched it go.

The artist in Clary was reminded of a fallen angel, burning and burning and burning until it was burned away into nothing but ash and wind.


	28. To Endure The Aftermath

**To Endure The Aftermath**

 _Chapter song: Flares by The Script_

Idris, 2008

 _"Clary," Jonathan said. He was suddenly right next to her, when he didn't even remember moving. But his sister was crying, and her shoulders were shaking, and she looked absolutely distraught, so he awkwardly put his arms round her. They hadn't hugged in years, he realised. The thought filled him with sorrow._

 _He hadn't been sure he made the right call by killing Valentine himself, but when he looked at her tear-stained face again, he lost all his doubt._

 _She wouldn't have been able to kill her father._

 _It would have destroyed her._

 _He kissed her forehead, and the gesture of affection was jarring to the both of them. Clary broke out of his arms and sunk to her knees in the sand._

 _What was he supposed to do? He hadn't had to comfort anyone in years, and he'd almost forgotten how. The realisation made him hate Valentine even more._

 _He didn't want to go too near to her, so he kneeled in front of her in the sand, within touching distance, but far enough away to let her breathe. And then he said, "Valentine was bluffing."_

 _Her shoulders froze for a moment, her sobs suspended long enough for her to say, "What?"_

 _"He was bluffing," he repeated. Unsure of what to do with his hands, he flung them out to the side and fiddled with the sand that stuck to them. "He never sent Pangborn to kill Luke and the others. He never sent anyone. He was bluffing."_

 _"Valentine doesn't bluff." Her voice trembled, and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on her knees._

 _He laughed, and she frowned. Only then did she glance up at him. He met her gaze before she could pull it back down. He silently dared her to break eye contact. "You've been gone a while, little sister," he said. "Valentine would tell your Jace you two were siblings if he thought it was the most effective thing to say."_

 _Perhaps that was the wrong way to put it. But he continued on. "I could tell he was lying. He was just trying to scramble for the upper hand in the conversation."_

 _"He already had the upper hand." Her voice was still small, but it was growing larger._

 _"You unsettled him then, made him rethink his conviction. He'd underestimated how much you'd get under his skin, and he tried to combat that by getting under yours. You may not have noticed, but you_ can _be a little unnerving sometimes."_

 _That made her laugh. They both knew the opposite was true._

 _"I didn't burn the Mortal Cup," she admitted._

 _Now it was his turn to freeze in shock. "What?"_

 _She reached into the pocket of her jacket, and drew out another card, identical to the one he'd just seen go up in flames. He studied it for a moment before he spotted the difference: The brush strokes it was painted in were much more delicate and precise. This time Jonathan doubted it was an illusion when the Cup shone with some sort of inner light. "When Simon gave it to me, I suspected I'd have to trick him. So I painted a fake one myself, this morning. I used a hairdryer to make sure it was dry in time." She laughed a little. "I guess I was right."_

 _She looked. . . proud of herself._

 _After a moment of silence, he got to his feet. "Go home, Clary. Your friends will be worried about you. Luke and everyone else are fine. They just want to see you safe and sound." He held out his hand to help her up._

 _She looked at him for a second. On the horizon, the first few stars were beginning to emerge. They were reflected in her eyes. "What'll you do?" She asked._

 _He scratched the back of his head. "Working things out, I guess. Learn how to live as a Shadowhunter who's not a part of the Clave. Try to sort things out." He shrugged. "I'll find something to do, I'm sure."_

 _"So long as it doesn't involve murdering innocent civilians." A smile played about her lips, and he smiled back._

 _"I'll do my best to avoid that." They both knew it was a promise he intended to keep._

 _He held out a hand again. This time, she took it._

* * *

New York, 2008

In the weeks afterwards, Clary received a letter from Jia Penhallow, the Consul herself, assuring her that Brother Zachariah had explained in detail whatever he'd found in her head that he found so intriguing, and that she, Jia, expressed her most sincere condolences about the things Clary had been through, and that she'd made an executive decision on the behalf of the Clave to let her remain a Shadowhunter and an esteemed member of the Clave, should she so wish.

Jace and Simon had cheered upon reading it. Isabelle had just grinned, and Alec and Luke had smiled at her. It'd been difficult for Luke to show any explicit displays of happiness since the death of his fiancée, so that smile on its own had happiness warming her gut.

Magnus had seemed offended when she'd told him that she'd been worried Valentine had killed him whilst on the lake, claiming that "No Shadowhunter will ever be able to murder me, biscuit," but she hadn't missed the touched look that had flickered in his eyes, nor how his hug had been much tighter than she expected.

Today, she'd woken at four am after a particularly violent nightmare that had left her gasping for breath and slick with sweat, and had been unable to get back to sleep. Come ten o'clock, she'd still had too much pent up energy to stand, so she'd offered to take Addie out in her pram.

It was a nice day, very sunny, and the park was out in all it's greenery, as befitted a park in late spring. Addie was still fast asleep, sucking on her thumb, and Clary very carefully manoeuvred around the bumps and dips in the path so as not to jostle and wake her. She was rather enjoying the silence that came of a peaceful environment. She'd had far too much of the silence of mourners; the Institute was choked with it. The Lightwoods were taking Max's loss hard.

She found a bench free of graffiti to sit on, and lifted her sister from the pram into her lap. Idly rocking her back and forth humming a half-forgotten lullaby, she almost didn't notice when the footsteps crunched over twigs behind her.

Clary suspected he'd purposefully made his footsteps loud so he wouldn't startle her with his approach. It was oddly considerate of him; the sort of thing he might have done when they were children, when everything was still simple. Or rather, when everything still _seemed_ simple, even if it wasn't.

There was a smile on her face as she turned around and greeted him.

"Hello, Jonathan."

Her brother awkwardly took a seat on the bench next to her. "Hello, Clarissa."

She studied him for a moment, Addie lying temporarily forgotten in her arms. His white hair was longer, and fell down to his chin now. She could still see discreet bulges at his wrists and ankles where he kept emergency blades sheathed, but otherwise he was unarmed. His posture was less rigid than she remembered as well, like he was finally learning how to relax.

"You look better," she observed. "Lighter, I guess. Happier."

He gave her a tight smile, and examined her the way she had him. She sat still as he took in the fiery hair she'd thrown back into a plait that morning, the ratty jeans, the old paint-splattered shirt that she'd rolled up at the sleeves. "Likewise." Then his gaze moved to Addie and he froze.

Clary raised an eyebrow. "You can hold her if you want." She made to lift the baby up, but her brother scooted away so far he slammed into the metal arm rest.

She stared at him incredulously, then started laughing. Hard. "Are you _scared_ of her?"

He looked lost for words for a moment. "No," he said defensively. It would just feel strange holding my late estranged mother's half werewolf baby."

"Addie's not a werewolf," Clary assured him. "She fought off the disease in the womb." She cocked her head to the side to study him again; her plait fell over her shoulder. Addie made an cute gurgling sound in her sleep and Jonathan jumped. Clary laughed again. "You are definitely scared of her."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, but a red flush creeping up his neck betrayed his embarrassment.

Deciding she'd teased him enough, she changed the subject. "So, have you decided on a place to stay?"

He nodded, seemingly glad for the subject change as well. "I'm currently living in Father's moving inter-dimensional apartment. Travelling the world. Killing demons. Seeing the sights."

"Possibly killing demons who're stalking about the sights?" She inquired.

"Of course."

"You're not stealing food and other stuff from mundanes, are you?"

He sighed. "No, I'm not, Clary. I'm trying to be a good person. Does that cover all the bases?"

She thought for a moment. "I believe it does." She glanced down at Addie then, at the tiny baby who had her whole lie ahead of her. Motherless. Brotherless. "You will visit, won't you? I want Addie to have met you at least once a year as she grows up."

Her brother's face was regretful as he opened his mouth, like he knew she wouldn't like his answer, but she glared at him, and that seemed to give him pause. "Alright," he conceded after a long moment. "I'll make sure to drop by every so often." He glanced at the watch he was wearing. "You'd better be getting home in time for Adele's feeding time."

"It's odd that you know that."

"I'm odd in general."

They stared at each other for a moment. Jonathan broke first. "Clary," he began, then started again. "You're my sister. You know I love you, right? You're my little sister."

It was exactly what she'd wanted to hear. "I love you too, brother."

They shook hands.

When Clary went home, she felt the future unfurling beneath her feet, like a story waiting to be written.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own TMI.**

 **So that's the last chapter! Thanks to everyone who followed, favourited and reviewed on this story in the last nine months, it meant so much to me and gave me the inspiration to keep going.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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